A hilarious, multi-layered, modern mashup of Don Quixote, Cold
Comfort Farm, and The Thirteenth Tale, The Seductive Lady Vanessa of
Manhattanshire is an ingenious must-read for fans of romantic fiction,
literary satire, and books about books.
Famous Arabic translator Oona Noor receives a mysterious manuscript from
Cairo entitled The Seductive Lady Vanessa of Manhattanshire and
realizes she has discovered a masterpiece. The book, written by an
unknown author named Aisha Benengeli, spins the tale of Maxine More, a
divorced, romance novel-obsessed New Yorker who envisions herself as a
Georgian Lady and sees the world entirely through the prism of her
beloved books. Designating her cleaning lady Magdalena Cruz as her
lady-in-waiting, Lady Vee embarks on a series of misadventures. She
mistakes a plumber for a famous alpha male; pursues her poodle-owning
crush, Nelson Dodge; dispenses misguided advice to the lovelorn and goes
man-hunting on New York's Upper East Side. Heartbroken when the
manuscript ends abruptly, translator Noor journeys to Cairo, hunts for
the concluding pages, and uncovers a stunning confession from Lady Vee's
creator Benengeli about her own romantic troubles. As the author
struggles to find happiness for her crazed character and herself, the
translator desperately searches for the elusive writer. In the end, this
delightfully inventive novel unspools three tales about three very
different women, each on a quest for a perfect love story.
