Me and Mr Booker - Softcover

Cory Taylor is an award-winning screenwriter who has also published short fiction and children's books. She lives in Brisbane. Already a success in her native Australia, the searingly honest, and funny, Me and Mr Booker is her first novel.

Australian Taylor’s debut is a Lolita-esque tale of 16-year-old Martha’s affair with an unhappily married older man. Martha meets Mr. Booker and his wife at a party hosted by her mother and immediately falls under the sway of the glamorous couple. Before long, they are taking her clothes shopping and paying for her to get her hair styled. It’s a welcome escape for Martha, who wishes her mother would kick her feckless father to the curb once and for all. Martha falls into an affair with Mr. Booker and discovers the dissatisfaction behind the facade of his carefree life with Mrs. Booker. Her mother and Mrs. Booker remain blissfully ignorant, but Martha’s father, when he isn’t concentrating on his latest scheme to get money from Martha’s mother, is suspicious of the amount of time Martha is spending with this older friend of the family. It’s hard to sympathize with Taylor’s characters, particularly Martha’s self-involved parents, but this unsentimental coming-of-age story presents a nice counterpoint to the typically dramatic tales of teenage angst. --Kristine Huntley