#344 Bad Boy Number Seventeen- Lucia Perillo

#344 Bad Boy Number Seventeen- Lucia Perillo

Starting a new collection with this story. Happiness is a Chemical was listed as one of the best books of 2012. Good start with Bad Boy Number Seventeen. A woman is at a bar with her sister—the one with Down Syndrome—and ruminates on all the bad decision relationships she has had.

“Inside every dissolute romantic there’s a brooding Schopenhauer, with a chronic melancholy that he nurses like a sourball in his cheek. He can see the whole arc of his life—from the uphill curve that is his present freedom to the downhill slope that’ll lead him to some evangelical storefront church where he’ll suddenly find himself swaying with his hands raised in the air. And the one’s who come without this flaring sense of precognition are just losers, plain and simple.”

Ouch! That’s quite a bar to set. As she finds herself number seventeen, we learn more about her sister. The story is as much about that connection than about her wayward love life. This is both funny, and touching.

Rating: 8-8-8-9 Total= 34