Slow Dancing

I don't know how I missed knowing about Benedict all these years. She's been an award-winning novelist for two decades but I only just recently discovered her. This was her first novel, nominated for the National Book Award, and it's set during and just after Reagan's election in 1980 -- which seems like the Paleolithic now (Bush having brought us up to perhaps the Neolithic). Lexi Steiner is a New York girl transplanted to Southern California, an ambitious immigration lawyer whose best friend (alter ego, actually) is Nell, a writer. The two of them have followed each other around the country since college, being constantly together, sometimes sharing bedmates, and always telling each other absolutely everything. But at the age of twenty-nine, their shared life as "refugees" is beginning to wear thin; maybe love and caring about someone isn't such a bad idea after all. Then there's David Wiley, semi-fanatical hard-news reporter who's really tired of living in hotels and airports. Lexi and David get together for dinner at just the right moment in both their lives, and you sort of know where things are headed. But first they have to figure out how to be a couple, but it's like slow dancing: You just stand close together and move your feet a little. This is really a well-written story and even in her first novel, Benedict shows great expertise in character development. The unsettling thing is how different the times were in 1980, how "quaint" Lexi's and Nell's sexual adventures seem, how naive David's daughter, Louise, is at twelve and fourteen. It makes you realize just how far the country has backslid in the past decade; I expect high-top shoes and buggy-whips any day now. You forget what "liberal" used to mean, before the Right turned it into a swear-word. Terrific book, though.