the unprofessionals

The Unprofessionals by Julie Hecht (Simon & Schuster, 2008)

Julie Hecht is a very smart, funny, and idiosyncratic writer. This book, her only novel, takes the form of a monologue, long-winded and discursive, by an unhappy woman who is completely disenchanted by her life and the world.  She is focused on her inappropriate friendship with “the boy,” the son of friends, who shares her dislike and disdain for just about everything and everyone.  Plus, he’s a heroin addict.  They communicate mainly by late-night marathon phone calls.  These conversations are interwoven with scenes from the narrator’s boring and lonely life — she’s married to a nonentity she barely tolerates.  This is all rather thin, bitter, self-involved stuff, but Hecht manages to transcend these limitations and find — and almost celebrate — the underlying  humanity.