Pick-Up Line: A New Orleans Love Story (Formerly Side Effects), by Patty Friedmann
"If Secondhand Smoke proved Patty Friedmann reigning Queen of Black Humor, her new novel, Side Effects, A New Orleans Love Story, presents her as the South's Queen of Compassion. I just met three vibrant new characters whose divisive racial, class and educational backgrounds should have them at each other's throats. Instead, these drugstore pharmacy employees, Ciana, Vendetta, and Lennon, bond together to solve a family murder. Each voice is an original; each character speaks in dialogue grounded in New Orleans. Their talk is street poetry, as unique to this city of soul as Mardi Grai or Jazz Fest. Like reading good poetry, I found myself backing up to savor the spoken syllables a second time. This is splendid reading, a driving narrative, not five stars so much as a small galaxy." -- Amazon reviewer
“Friedmann's charming story of the ... affection among three diverse co-workers at a New Orleans pharmacy also now reads as a tribute to a unique American city.” -Publishers Weekly
"The story is by turns humorous and heartbreaking, and the author is adept at capturing that quirky combination of love and resentment that characterizes so many families. Friedmann’s themes of sibling rivalry and unlikely friendships will linger with readers.” -School Library Journal
ROMANCE IS THE BEST PAIN-KILLER…
Cupid’s working overtime in the unlikely venue of N.O. Drugs, where plus-sized beauty Ciana Jambon works with dread-locked pharmacy student Lennon Israel, who’s so handsome, so meticulous he just has to be gay. But she can't help herself—she’s got the crush of the century. Unbeknownst to her, Lennon’s carrying his own torch. Family problems distract both of them (alongside the true New Orleans oddballs who scuffle between the Seasonal Specials and Depends aisles) until tragedy leaves Ciana reeling. Lennon wonders if there’s a murderer in her clan, and he’s pretty sure he’s the only one who can help. What woman can resist a knight in shining armor?
Friedmann’s witty portrayal of Ciana's and Lennon’s families from hell, as well as the deliciously dysfunctional relatives of their wise co-worker, Vendetta Greene, will have you laughing out loud as well as nodding in recognition.
WARNING: This is anything but a formula romance. But it is a great love story—and the perfect prescription for anyone feeling tired, rundown, and depressed from reading the same old thing over and over again. The only side effect is a slight watering of the eyes as the first tender shoots of love start to bud and blossom.
A veritable (prescription drug) cocktail of Walker Percy's southern elegance laced with the zany black comedy of the Silver Linings Playbook.
Originally titled Side Effects
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Meet the Author
Patty Friedmann's most recent appearance on Amazon is with Pick-Up Line, an electronic version of a novel that almost was lost in 2006 in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Pick-Up Line follows her electronic bestseller Too Jewish that also came out from booksBnimble in 2010. She is now back with her darkly humorous literary fiction after two YA novels No Takebacks and Taken Away. Friedmann is the author of A Little Bit Ruined, Side Effects (now Pick-Up Line), Secondhand Smoke, Eleanor Rushing, and Odds, all currently in print from Counterpoint, and of The Exact Image of Mother (Viking 1991) and Too Smart to Be Rich (New Chapter 1988). This year her An Organized Panic took first runner-up out of 406 novel entries in the Faulkner-Wisdom literary competition. In 2001-2002, she was writer-in-residence at Tulane University. Patty has reviewed for Publishers Weekly, Brightleaf, Short Story, and the Times-Picayune; her short stories have appeared in Horn Gallery, Short Story, LaLit, Xavier Review, and elsewhere; and she has had essays in Oxford American, Speakeasy, and New Orleans Review. Stage productions under the direction of Carl Walker are The Accidental Jew and Lovely Rita. She was included in The Great American Writers Cookbook and Christmas Stories from Louisiana in 2003, as well as in the collections My New Orleans in 2005, Intersections in 2006, Life in the Wake and New Orleans Noir in 2007, and Something in the Water in 2011. The manuscript of a new book titled An Organized Panic took second place out of 406 entries in the novel category of the William Falulkner-William Wisdom literary competition in 2012. In 2009 Oxford American included her Secondhand Smoke with Gone With the Wind, Deliverance, and A Lesson Before Dying as one of the 30 Most Underrated Southern Books. Patty is the mother of Esme Roberson and Werner Friedmann II and the grandmother of Summer Roberson and Kennedy and Carmine Friedmann.More from this Author
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