"Losing It"

New from Riverhead Books: Losing It: A Novel by Emma Rathbone.

About the book, from the publisher:

Julia Greenfield has a problem: she’s twenty-six years old and she’s still a virgin. Sex ought to be easy. People have it all the time! But, without meaning to, she made it through college and into adulthood with her virginity intact. Something’s got to change.

To re-route herself from her stalled life, Julia travels to spend the summer with her mysterious aunt Vivienne in North Carolina. It’s not long, however, before she unearths a confounding secret—her 58 year old aunt is a virgin too. In the unrelenting heat of the southern summer, Julia becomes fixated on puzzling out what could have lead to Viv’s appalling condition, all while trying to avoid the same fate.

Filled with offbeat characters and subtle, wry humor, Losing It is about the primal fear that you just. might. never. meet. anyone. It’s about desiring something with the kind of obsessive fervor that almost guarantees you won’t get it. It’s about the blurry lines between sex and love, and trying to figure out which one you’re going for. And it’s about the decisions—and non-decisions—we make that can end up shaping a life.

Visit Emma Rathbone's website.

--Marshal Zeringue