My Life, Starring Dara FalconPaperback, 9 June 1998

Dara Falcon is brilliant. She is manipulative. She is seductive. She makes things happen. She is someone for whom the novel's narrator, Jean Warner, is a perfect complement. Jean, an appealing but unformed young woman, is an only child brought up by an aunt after her parents' death. She has married into a large New England family, in which she happily -- if somewhat passively -- immerses herself. Until Dara Falcon arrives in town. Almost immediately they are friends; almost immediately everything about Dara fascinates Jean -- Dara's secret and perfect room, her past, her clothes, her acting career, her unabashed assault on the town's men. And almost immediately the ordinary stresses and strains of the family Jean has idealized become apparent as Dara insinuates herself into their lives. Suddenly Dara is everywhere -- moving in with the man who may drive the family's business under; writing mysteriously to Jean's favorite and supposedly happily married brother-in-law; horning in on Jean's part-time typing job; setting herself up as the star of the local play. And soon Jean's life, her marriage, her very idea of herself, have been dramatically wrenched out of their seemingly innocent, if unexamined, balance, sending her off in uncharted directions.