Alternative Remedies for Loss

March 26, 2018
Cantor’s stellar debut follows 22-year-old New Yorker Olivia Harris as she contends with her close-knit family and decides to make a film to honor her mother, Eleanor, after she dies of cancer. Though she has one more semester to go at Vassar, Olivia uses her brother Alec’s connections to get an entry-level job at a Manhattan production company. There, she meets and get involved with Michel Zahavi, a client 16 years her senior. While Olivia treats the relationship as a temporary situation to help her cope with her loss, Michel appears to be more attached. Meanwhile, Olivia and her brothers are aghast that their father brings his new girlfriend on a family trip to India a few months after Eleanor’s death. After the trip, while sorting through Eleanor’s things, Olivia discovers some curious notes signed by “F” that lead her on a journey back to India to find out the truth about who F is. She also shoots footage there for a film to complete her thesis. Olivia’s self-centered brattiness feels true, but despite that she’s a charming, well-fleshed out character who carries the story. Cantor’s novel is not only full of unexpected turns but hits all the right emotional notes.

March 1, 2018
Unmoored by her mother's death, a young woman finds herself making questionable decisions, processing new information about the past, and reaching toward a more enlightened future.There's a punchy moment on Page 4 of Cantor's debut when Olivia Harris, 22 and working a lowly job at a Manhattan film production company, goes home with a not-especially-attractive client and finds herself charging him $1,000 for sex. But Olivia, who grew up comfortably in Westchester County and has nearly finished her degree at Vassar, is no kind of sex worker; instead she's a grieving daughter whose mother succumbed to a brain tumor a few months earlier. For much of this cool tale, Olivia maintains her unpredictable and borderline sympathetic stance, whether taking up with another, possibly abusive client; resisting any gesture of kindness from--or toward--her father's new companion; or taking the support of parent, friends, and siblings for granted. But Olivia is working through her pain and loss and also following the trail of some mysterious correspondence in her mother's effects which leads her into the world of yoga and later to an Indian ashram. In between these minimal events, the novel spends a great deal of time hanging out with Olivia--in bars, with her friend Kelsey, with family members, work colleagues, ashram acquaintances, passing lovers. Cantor acknowledges Olivia's mixed emotions--anger, sadness, confusion--yet translates them into a slowly paced, numbly expressed sequence of jumpy choices. A coda follows, which perhaps sees the dawning of some maturity, although it's accompanied by Olivia's unacknowledged acceptance of another round of easy opportunities.There's no shortage of wrenching writing about the loss of a mother, but this novel fails to hit memorable heights.

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March 1, 2018
Olivia Harris is 22, working as a runner for a Manhattan production company, and just asked a total stranger for $1,000 in exchange for sex. This behavior is out of the ordinary, but Olivia's been floundering in the months since her mother suddenly passed away. The solid, stable family that Olivia took for granted now seems to be falling apart. Her father is dating, her older brothers are wrapped up in their own lives, and Olivia's motivation has evaporated. After finding mysterious letters of her mother's, a spark of ambition returns. Olivia's mission to uncover the mystery takes her to all the way to an ashram in India, but she ends up learning more about herself than about her mother's last months. A sharp and witty glimpse inside a functionally dysfunctional family, Cantor's first novel is heartbreakingly honest. Fans of Helen Fielding, Emma Straub, and Maggie Shipstead will appreciate Olivia's zest for life and capacity for personal growth. With a delightfully imperfect heroine, vibrant settings, and snappy dialogue, this is a whip-smart debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)