AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTYTracy LettsTheatre Communications Group, $13.95
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As it happens, though, that’s not the case. His anatomization of a profoundly—and yet not all that exceptionally—dysfunctional Oklahoma family is almost as compelling on the page as it is onstage. In a way, it’s more compelling: disengaged from theatrical strategies, his language is isolated in its spare grace, and his characters can be seen clear through to their psychic skeletons. Slowed down, clever or cunning gestures are easier to catch. Reading gave me the chance to spend more time with the family’s eldest daughter, 46-year-old Barbara, for example, and appreciate what a perfectly formed child of addiction she is. Certain things are lost, like the marvelous cacaphony of Letts’s crowd scenes, but the script is well worth reading whether or not you’ve seen the play. —Tony Adler
When Jennifer Stevenson’s trashy, sexy, and magical first novel Trash Sex Magic came out four years ago, the Evanston writer said she was already working on a new book, about an English nobleman whose sexually frustrated mistress makes him an incubus and confines him to a bed until he can satisfy 100 women. The Brass Bed, published this month, is that book—and it’s every bit as entertainingly kinky as Stevenson’s debut. Jewel Heiss, a frisky fraud investigator for the Chicago Department of Consumer Affairs, is assigned to check out the sex therapist her boss’s wife has been seeing. The smooth-talking therapist doesn’t do much more than prescribe a nap on an antique brass bed, but his female clients all wake up really, really happy. Jewel goes undercover under the covers, and finds the sex—did she dream it? was she drugged?—so amazing that she decides the investigation requires repeat visits. Is she the 100th woman? It would seem so, because the incubus is freed from the curse and takes quite a shine to her. But despite the mind-blowing sex, she’s not sure she wants a committed relationship with a former demon. As if things weren’t already odd enough, wish-granting genies and cigarette-smoking pigeons further enliven this bawdy, often flat-out hilarious tale. —Jerome Ludwig
M.I.A. Michael Allen DymmochThomas Dunne Books, $24.95
Michael Allen Dymmoch at the Printers Row Book Fair
Thu 5/29, 7 PM, Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, 773-295-2665, bookcellarinc.com.
Sat 6/7, 4 PM, Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn, TK PHONE AND/OR WEBSITE.
