I Must Have You: a Novel

April 15, 2017
Taking place over 48 hours in February 1999, Novak's bildungsroman follows eighth-grader Elliot, who's made a name for herself (plus a wad of cash) as the weight-loss guru of her tony Chicago Montessori school. Elliot misses Lisa, her best friend, who, now apparently recovered from her own eating disorder, is off discovering actual sex with her high-school-graduate boyfriend, Junior Carlos, instead of talking about it with Elliot. Anna, Elliot's poetry-professor mom, flirts with a few disasters at once, and, like her daughter, walks a death wish on a short leash. After Lisa gets sent to the hospital, this time undeservedly, Elliot finds an opportunity to reconnect. Poet Novak's vibrating, image-laden, chiaroscuro prose is chockablock with bolstering references to her novel's setting; characters chat on AOL, quote Clueless and Wayne's World, know all the Chicagoland trivia, and sing along to an endless stream of the era's most iconic music. Sensationally exploring the devastating particulars of young (and not so young) womanhood, this promising debut will slip right in to the new adult genre.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)