Across a crowded room

Chick-lit romp downplays serious theme with humor

By Beverly Meyer

The Free Lance-Star

DENIAL can be  tough to overcome. In Jill Smolinski’s chuckly new  novel, characters are challenged to face the fact they are in denial about some rather serious problems—enabling, drug addiction and hoarding.

Lucy Bloom has just been hired to clear out the monstrously cluttered Victorian house of a famous, but reclusive, artist. Her credentials rest in  “Things Are Not People,” a the how-to book she authored on organizing and purging possessions.

What her employer doesn’t know is that Lucy has purged everything she owns—except her vintage Mustang—to fund her son’s stay in a Florida rehab. Without even a roof over her head, Lucy is reduced to sharing the bedroom of her best friend’s 3-year-old.

But with a huge commission riding  on this gig and a bonus if it gets done on time, Lucy tackles the massive clutter this 65-year-old has accumulated, and soon realizes that it’s the house’s inhabitant that poses the biggest challenge.

With laugh-out-loud lines sprinkled throughout this light romp, Smolinski has cleared a place for herself  on readers’ bookshelves.

Beverly Meyer  is a copy editor  with The Free Lance–Star.

OBJECTS OF MY  AFFECTION

By Jill Smolinski

(Simon & Schuster, $24.99, 310 pp.)

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