Just Jennifer

You by Caroline Kepnes (Atria Books/Emily Bestler, September 2014)

When M.F.A. student Guinevere Beck walks into the East Village bookstore where Joe Golberg works, he is instantly obsessed with her, that they are soul mates, even if she doesn’t realize it yet.  Joe stalks Guinevere, intervening when she is in trouble like an ill-intentioned guardian angel.  A drunken incident on a subway platform late one night finally reveals Joe to Guinevere and he is able to convince himself, if not Guinevere, that they are in a relationship that nothing or no one can stand in the way of.  Joe doesn’t realize that Beck (as she calls herself) is a bit like a psychotic Holly Golightly and has created a façade of who she thinks she should be if not who she wants to be and spends more time on real life performance art drama than on her writing.  Beck senses Joe is a little off, but is too wrapped up in herself to realize just how much until it is too late.  Told in alternating voices, Joe refers to Beck as “You” in his narrative, a sound that has the pulsing throb of a Cole Porter song, but the lunacy and obsession of a dangerous stalker.  Creepy without being gruesome, tension comes from Joe and Beck’s thoughts and obsessions rather than violence and the idea that this is very plausible.  A well-constructed novel that does not resort to the tropes so often found in first novels.