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Like most
visitors to the New York Botanical Garden, I'd always seen them during
the day in sunshine when the colors of the flowers and foliage were
bright and their groomed perfection was obvious. But that evening,
as we rode up the winding road that led through the gardens, the brilliance
of the gardens was concealed by the encroaching twilight. Rather than
the cultivated postcard I was familiar with, I found I preferred the
mystery that loomed before me now as the shadows deepened. What was
hiding in the old branches of the tall elm? In the twisted limbs of
the maple? What was it that made the needles of the spruce quiver?
Why did the forest seem more spirited in this dusky light? Then we
rounded a turn and the illuminated conservatory blossomed out of the
darker greenery surrounding it.
As
the wife of a control freak psychotherapist, Julia Sterling, at
the tender age of 38, is a Manhattan socialite who, indirectly through
her husband's connections, takes a job as a phone-sex therapist
at the high-toned Butterfield Institute. (BUTTERFIELD 8, if you
remember correctly, is the name of John O'Hara's famous novel about
high-class call girls.) Combined with her intense desires which
have gone unfulfilled at home and a writer's need to know how things
work, Julia launches into a disturbing and erotic adventure with
her clients.
Will
Dr. Sterling's charity foundation (FIT for FATHERS IN NEED) be charged
with wrongdoing by the IRS? Will the Butterfield Institute get exposed
as a sex shop? Will Julia give herself over completely to the Institute's
director, Sam, her husband's associate, who quotes ""To His Coy
Mistress"" with upper-class longing? Or will her college newspaper
chum --- newly divorced and in New York --- rekindle their teenage
obsession? Like Isadora Wing before her, Julia overcomes her initial
fears and finds a greater, stronger sense of herself at book's end.
This
is a fun read, a quick one at that. You'll be passing this book
around the office to everybody you know. M. J. Rose, a former ad
executive who has a commercial in the Museum of Modern Art, self-published
this book and then sold it to Simon & Schuster, under whose guidance
the book is selling very, very well, particularly on Amazon.com,
where it's the top-selling independent book. Rose's story is as
fascinating as Sterling's, filled with the same need to uncover
the multifaceted aspects of everything, the same passion, the same
fascination with people and what makes them tick. LIP SERVICE is
a remarkable achievement for this author.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
 Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.
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