I started Z because I’d really enjoyed Baratz-Logsted’s previous novel The Bro-Magnet, and because the cover and title were intriguing; I didn’t pay much attention to the blurb.  Consequently, it took me 50 pages to catch on:

“Don’t forget what I said, Nix,” she said.

“About… ?”

“About Tim and Dahlia. They’re careless people. Like me.”

That was my first clue — though looking back, I was very struck by the reference to an eye doctor’s office, with a logo of “two giant contact lenses, shimmering opalescent on the glass, but with no eyes behind them, like an eerie Mr. Magoo without the hornrims.”

Yes, this quirky romantic comedy about Nix Carter, returned to a smallish town near New York, and her cousin Dahlia, and Dahlia’s wealthy husband Tim, is, of all things, a rewrite of The Great Gatsby.   With one major difference: the man who fascinates Nix is a mysterious, mystically out-of-time, Spanish — maybe — sword fighter who washes windows and fights injustice. (more…)