THE LADY WAITING

A 21-year-old Polish woman wins the immigration lottery, then keeps getting lucky.

As this unusual caper novel opens, our narrator, Viva—new to Los Angeles after a failed attempt to start her American life in Chicago—picks up a woman hitchhiking in a green cocktail dress on the 101. Bobby Sleeper turns out to be from Poland, too, though from a much wealthier and more cosmopolitan background. “At any given moment, half the population of LA is giving therapy to the other half,” Bobby informs Viva when she takes her out to lunch in gratitude for the ride. “Fifty percent of LA is depressed. Only five percent of Bhutan is. You ever been here?…The hamachi salad’s yummy.” Later that day, Viva takes a position as live-in personal assistant to Bobby and her rich, hot husband, Sebastian Sleeper, a retired film director. Along with the couple’s acerbic gay housemate, Lance, the group will engage in the daily custom of “spritzatura”—a Spritz Veneziano in the hot tub at dusk. One of many amusing aspects of Zyzak’s tale is its perspective; though the action occurs in 2018, it’s narrated from 2079, when Viva is 84, allowing for clever asides about how things “used to be” in our current time. Zyzak does an amazing job with Viva’s narration—because her English is not perfect, her understanding of the hyperarticulate Bobby runs a little behind the reader’s, though Viva has some insights she withholds until the very end (and a fine ending it is). The caper that sends the plot into overdrive involves The Lady Waiting, a (fictional) Vermeer painting stolen in a 2009 Berlin museum heist. Two of Bobby’s ex-husbands and Bobby herself have become involved in a scheme to return it for the huge reward, $50,000 of which can be Viva’s if she helps out. With its madcap plot, fantastic central characters, and White Lotus–style wealth porn (the kind where a character eats caviar off the kitchen floor after the jar falls out of the fridge), screenwriter Zyzak’s second novel seems like catnip for Hollywood.

Funny, original, worldly, and very cool. A standout.