Maynard & Jennica

Maynard Gogarty once played music professionally, but his career has stalled. He has also given up his old contempt for people, though he still secretly records New Yorkers whose clothing choices go wrong. Riding an uptown 6 train during the humid summer of 2000, he notices Jennica Green, a Californian who tends to look back fondly on the past and who has worked out that she has spent 68.53 percent of her adult years alone.

Their first encounter is brief, but fate reunites them at a showing of one of Maynard's films, and something more than friendship begins. Their story draws in a crowd of people who all want a say: a host of relatives, living and dead, a charming con artist whose origins are never settled, a hip-hop promoter named Puppy Jones, several questionable lawyers, a childhood friend who has drifted away, and a freelance writer for The New Yorker.

The novel is told through thirty-five separate narrators. Despite the many voices, the focus stays on the bond between Maynard and Jennica, which remains the book's emotional center.