Jayme Mattler's throaty, laid-back presentation is the perfect foil for this quirky audiobook. It’s a smart glimpse of a millennial's take on the changing city of Austin, Texas, and her examination of her underachieving life. It’s all triggered by a Lululemon store opening up near the Whole Foods where she works. Through a series of letters to her former boyfriend/roommate that she writes but doesn’t deliver, Roxy explores life, love, activism, feminism, and the "joys" of having meth heads living next door. Veering from the absurd to the sublime, from the hilarious to the poignant, this audiobook is a pleasure to hear. Mattler keeps to a steady cadence that makes the listener experience the story in a personal way. A.C.P. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
The Roxy Letters
Narrated by Jayme Mattler
Mary Pauline LowryUnabridged — 9 hours, 39 minutes
The Roxy Letters
Narrated by Jayme Mattler
Mary Pauline LowryUnabridged — 9 hours, 39 minutes
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Overview
Bridget Jones penned a diary; Roxy writes letters. Specifically: she writes letters to her hapless, rent-avoidant ex-boyfriend-and current roommate-Everett. This charming and funny twenty-something is under-employed (and under-romanced), and she's decidedly fed up with the indignities she endures as a deli maid at Whole Foods (the original), and the dismaying speed at which her beloved Austin is becoming corporatized. When a new Lululemon pops up at the intersection of Sixth and Lamar where the old Waterloo Video used to be, Roxy can stay silent no longer.
As her letters to Everett become less about overdue rent and more about the state of her life, Roxy realizes she's ready to be the heroine of her own story. She decides to team up with her two best friends to save Austin-and rescue Roxy's love life-in whatever way they can. But can this spunky, unforgettable millennial keep Austin weird, avoid arrest, and find romance-and even creative inspiration-in the process?
With timely themes and hilarious, laugh-out-loud moments, Roxy Letters is a smart and clever story that is “bursting with originality, quirky wit, and delightful charm” (Hannah Orenstein, author of Playing with Matches).
Editorial Reviews
02/03/2020
In Lowry’s fizzy epistolary novel (after Wildfire), an aspiring artist tries to thwart gentrification in her Austin, Tex., neighborhood, with madcap results. Roxy, a 28-year-old vegan, never thought she’d be working at a Whole Foods deli counter. Her housemate and ex-boyfriend, Everett, rarely pays rent on time; her dog’s vet bills are through the roof; and the tweakers next door seem bent on making her life miserable. When she notices that a shiny athleisure shop has replaced her favorite video store, she vows to “tackle” the place “to the motherfucking ground.” Lowry’s choice to write the novel as letters to Everett has the destabilizing effect of making Roxy’s new friends seem imaginary, like the fabulously quirky Artemis Starla, who seems to Roxy to have been reading her mail after they trade barbs against consumerism. In the letters, Roxy documents her crusade (a hand-painted protest sign reads “NO $100 TIGHTS, WE WANT OUR RIGHTS”) and its frequent side trips, divulging accounts of shockingly bad sex (no matter how many offerings she makes to the goddess Venus) and a hilariously humiliating experience at an orgasm convention. While bighearted Roxy manages to land on her feet, her misadventures are often so absurdly cartoonish that the few sobering moments have less impact. Fans of screwball comedies that don’t delve too deep should be pleased. (Apr.)
"Roxy is good for a laugh, but her sincerity is even more affecting, especially when it comes to loving a place that has made insiders of so many outsiders.... Reading THE ROXY LETTERS is as refreshing as a dip in Austin's beloved Barton Springs natural swimming hole, the kind of comic novel we need right now. Not just because it is fun, funny and filled with eccentrics, but because Lowry's novel proves that good people working together can make positive changes.”—Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post
"She fills The Roxy Letters with as much heart as fun, and as a result, the reader comes away from this novel feeling that this city [Austin] that's so special to so many is as cool as it's ever been."—The Austin Chronicle
"Exactly what I want to read right now – it’s fun, touching, and slightly ridiculous in all the best ways.”—BOOK RIOT
“The Roxy Letters reimagines the tropes of chick lit for a new generation, complete with absurdly funny situations, ambivalence about adulthood, and the desire for connection and fulfilling relationships. But Roxy is far more than a cooler Bridget Jones—she’s a big-hearted, awkward, uproariously funny woman whose endearing antics and odd-yet-relatable struggles will resonate with millennial and Gen X readers.” —BOOKLIST
"Like a tarot reading in the mental hospital, Lowry's novel bursts with quirky spirit and gleeful comic energy." —KIRKUS
“Naughty, effervescent fun. A novel abounding in dauschunds, tweakers, real fulfillment centers, aisles of strange beer, and shrines to Venus (they work!). Roxy rocks Austin. And rights the world.”
—Joy Williams, author of The Visiting Privilege
"THE ROXY LETTERS is bursting with originality, quirky wit, and delightful charm. This rollercoaster of a story is snappy, heartwarming, raunchy, and absurdly enjoyable. Roxy is an unforgettable narrator, and seeing Austin through her eyes is a real treat." — HANNAH ORENSTEIN, author of Playing with Matches
“Bawdy, frank and laugh-out-loud funny, The Roxy Letters brings to antic life all the hilarity and peppy horrors of being rootless and questing in your twenties.”
—Julia Claiborne Johnson, author of Be Frank With Me
“Tom Robbins meets Bridget Jones' Diary, eccentric, fun, delicious, for the thinking woman who loves her vagina."
—Rufi Thorpe, author of Dear Fang, with Love
"Roxy's life, from its wildly risqué escapades to its numerous crises du jour, is a total blast. Lowry's debut is the racy, funny page-turner we could use in these times."—J. Ryan Stradal, author of Kitchens of The Great Midwest
"The enormously talented Mary Pauline Lowry has given us a wonderful and compelling contradiction, a novel at once wicked and extravagant and vulnerable and pure. For comedy, for sheer joyous energy and deadly charm, you cannot do better than The Roxy Letters."
—Brady Udall, author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
"The breezy, charming, laugh-out-loud-funny voice of this book belies the strong bones of plot, character development, place and theme that lie beneath. Part love goddess, part urban warrior, part best-friend-you-wish-you-had, Roxy takes Austin by storm. You will fall in love with her. "
—Francesca Lia Block, author of Weetzie Bat
"Roxy and Mary Pauline Lowry are keeping Austin weird and wacky in The Roxy Letters. If you’ve ever shaken your fist at gentrification, been in a creative rut, had a wild best friend, or wondered where the hell your Prince Charming is, this peppy, confident, rollicking ride is for you!"—Georgia Clark, author of The Bucket List
"Mary Pauline Lowry’s THE ROXY LETTERS is too smart and clever to be called a romp, but whatever, it’s a total romp. I fell in love with Roxy, our hilarious, flawed, screwball narrator, and her quest to find herself in the muck of her twenties. Fun as heck."—Annie Hartnett, author of Rabbit Cake
2020-01-13
A series of mostly undelivered letters from a vegan Whole Foods deli maid and Goddess worshiper to her slacker ex-boyfriend.
"Dear Everett, Perhaps I've invited you to move into my spare bedroom against my better judgment." Judgment is not the long suit of Poxy Roxy—so dubbed by her evil supervisor, Dirty Steve, during a bout with chickenpox. Feeling adrift, she turns to columnist Dear Sugar for advice. "The best thing you can possibly do with your life is tackle the motherfucking shit out of it," says Sugar, and to Roxy, this means organizing a campaign to take down the Lululemon store that is moving into the space once occupied by her beloved Waterloo Video—because Lululemon is not a funky local business. Meanwhile, she's right across the street at the behemoth Whole Foods flagship store, which erased the character of this supposedly historic intersection when it opened in 1980. Well, it used to be a funky local business, before Roxy was born. Only animal rights is a stronger motivator for Roxy than confused anti-corporate nostalgia. "Thank Goddess that Spider House is still going strong, despite the fact that Starbucks stores have spread through the city faster than an STD in a retirement home." A clitoral masturbation cult, romantic liaisons with a skateboarder and a drummer, a feud with her meth-head neighbors, the near death of her weiner dog due to choking on the crotch of her pleather underpants—the predicaments never stop for our millennial heroine. Lowry is the heir apparent to Sarah Bird, whose comic novels Alamo House and The Boyfriend School perfectly captured the Austin of the 1980s. Roxy would love them. We will always remember this as the book that taught us the word "kyriarchy." Look it up.
Bursts with quirky spirit and gleeful comic energy.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173841315 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 04/07/2020 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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