From the inside flap:
"A sharply humorous, fast-paced debut novel about the effects -- some predictable, some wildly unexpected --that an encounter at gunpoint can have on the life of a (previously) assured young woman.
"The gun in question is pointed at twenty-one-year old Ellis as she walks through a New York City park. In the end she is unrobbed and physically unharmed. But she is left psychologically reeling.
"Over the next few weeks Ellis keeps everyone at bay: the police, the men who want to save her ('the ROTC boy' poet and 'the red-faced representative of the world'), and the university therapist who hints that her sweaters may be too tight. But when Ellis accompanies her mother, a nurse, on a mission to the Philippines, she finds that life -- even if held up -- cannot be held back, and neither, finally, can she."
Review:
Vida's debut novel is not as good as her second, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. And Now has its quirky, clever moments, and starts off in a tightly-written manner, but it quickly becomes obvious that for all of this novel's slyness, this should've been a novella. Few of the scenes in that make up the middle section of the novel have anything to do with Ellis's experience with the sad gunman: they're superfluous. It's just a semi-edited ramble, albeit a charming one at times.
Skip this one, but make sure to check out Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name.
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