Alison's Automotive Repair Manual: A Novel

Alison lives in a small West Virginia town with her sister and brother-in-law. As Alison's Automotive Repair Manual opens, her main occupation is mourning her husband, who died in an accident two years ago. Her sister, her friends, and her former boss at the community college have all grown weary of her grief, and beg her to move on. But Alison is paralyzed, maybe partially because she wasn't all that crazy about her husband in the first place. One day she discovers a disintegrating 1976 Corvette in her sister's garage and finally thinks of something she'd like to do: repair the Vette. Alison knows nothing about cars, but pegs away at her project anyhow, knowing all the while that "the whole thing was folly." Meanwhile, we follow her healing, her new love for a munitions expert named Max, her sister's quest to get pregnant, and the (literal) exposure of the town's secret history. While Alison is an appealingly complex character, forever stumbling into gaffes, the book is a little too neat, with its themes, goals, and love interests laid out tidily in the first 40 pages. But fans of quirky Southerners such as Jill McCorkle will find a sympathetic new voice here. --Claire Dederer

Customer Review: Good, not great.

This is a good book in the way some movies are good movies; it's not necessarily a book that stays with you long after you've finished it, but you don't feel like you've wasted your time. One thing bl...

Customer Review: Has some very good moments

I enjoyed reading this book. It is the story of Alison, wa woman in her thirties who is widowed when her husband dies in an accident. Like some woman in this situation, Alison romanticizes her relat...
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