Lucy Jinx is reading a folded up paperback à la David Lynch by truckstop neon in the back of a hatchback with cigarette burns in the velour upholstery.

There is something imminently identifiable about Lucy. Not so much a seeing-yourself-in-her (or vice versa) as a familiarity of being.

It’s the essence of Lucy that you identify with, because she’s what we all are when shrunk down to that micro-level.

Yes, I’m aware of how absolutely pretentious that sounds, but bear with me.

Lucy is a frickin trainwreck of the most cataclysmic sort, and because the novel is written in very, very close third, the reader gets to see the whole gory mess up close. And, because we never can look away from things like that, and because we’re all a little bit completely like that, it’s a recognizable place to be.

I kept thinking about Life: A User’s Manual (Georges Perec) while reading this, not because they are at all similar, but because neither is a book you read to read. They’re also both super chunky books that I’d definitely recommend grabbing the digital copy for.

The thing is, both are, in their own way, brilliant deep-dives into what makes up a person - thoughts, memories, experiences, objects, all of it. Perec’s title is very spot on. But trying to read them straight through is like sitting through a four-hour Zoom meeting where every department in the company has to detail analytics that only make sense to the people in that department.

In other words: It’s fucking torture.

Lucy Jinx is a book to dip in and out of. Think of Lucy like someone you know. Maybe not a close friend, but someone you hang out with from time to time. You’re not going to spend hours upon hours in each other’s company, but binge-watching here or a greasy diner there is definitely on the table.

If you take that approach, Lucy Jinx is a very enjoyable experience. She has some great quips, and I, too, often wonder why I carry around a notebook if I’m not going to write anything in it.