YOU OR SOMEONE LIKE YOU
Chandler Burr
Allen & Unwin - NZ$32.99

The cover meant I simply couldn't resist this one when I saw it in the recent fiction arrivals section of the Village Bookshop at Matakana. However as I haven't had time to read it yet, it is in the holiday pile, I am featuring below the publisher's cover blurb.


A clever and witty novel about the power of reading and literature that also makes you consider what defines identity and our sense of belonging.
It is often said that ‘no one reads in Hollywood’, so when Anne – the quiet, clever but generally overlooked wife of powerful Hollywood producer, Howard – is asked by a studio executive for a reading list, it inadvertently leads to her starting a book group with a small number of her husband’s colleagues. They fall in love with literature, and with Anne’s stories about books, writers and reading, and the size and influence of the group keeps increasing, until something terrible unexpectedly tears Anne’s marriage and life apart.
It is here that Chandler Burr brings to the novel an incident that occurred in his own life: When Anne and Howard’s son, Sam, turns up at a Yeshira on a spring-break trip to Israel, he is forcibly ejected for not being a real Jew because his mother is not Jewish. This, in turn, spins Howard into an identity crisis, and he rejects his family to pursue his inherited identity. Determined to keep her family together, Anne is left to fight back the only way she knows how, through literature.
Cleverly combining playful cameos of real Hollywood characters with such a thought-provoking issue, You or Someone Like You is ultimately a tender and witty novel about how we translate our world through literature.

‘You or Someone Like You is a pitch-perfect, often very funny novel about why, in this crazy world, we still bother to read. It’s for anyone who defiantly clings to the belief that a book can change our lives.’
David Ebershoff, author of The 19th Wife and The Danish Girl

‘well-crafted and thoroughly enjoyable.’ Jewish Book World

‘A true celebration of intellect . . . examines the personal decision each of us must make to run from, or embrace, our identity.’ Publishers Weekly

‘A savvy novel that deals with Hollywood from a cultural rather than a tabloid perspective.’ Kirkus Review (starred)

About the author
Chandler Burr is the author of a number of non-fiction books including A Separate Creation, The Emperor of Scent, and The Perfect Scent. He is the scent critic for The New York Times Style Magazine, and has published several articles in the New Yorker. This is his first novel.

Visit www.chandlerburr.com and the public discussion site www.annerosenbaum.com