"A provocative and bracing send-up of modern masculinity, from the author of Class and The Story of My Purity"-- "Marcello, an editor and poet, is on the brink of his forties. Like everyone in his life, including his sister-in-law, he's writing a novel. This novel. This novel will be about women. Love. Growing older. Maybe even taking responsibility. But unfortunately for Marcello, the women in his life resist definition. They flit and flicker constantly...

"Alyssa Harad always considered herself practical, earnest, and bookish. She was a proud feminist, a Birkenstock wearer, and a religious recycler; the only interests in which she came anywhere near self-indulgence were food and cooking. Until she chanced upon a blog and read a new kind of review--not of a novel or a recipe but of a perfume. How frivolous and girly, she thought at first. And yet, months later, she noticed she had begun to heard vials...