Something has gone terribly wrong.

Marie is the guilty pleasure personified, a trickster set loose on bourgeois morality and tact.

The stories in this collection often dwell on the distance between letter-writers and those who receive them, and that much of the correspondence isn’t received by its addressee seems somewhat beside the point. What matters is the letter-writing itself, that which gives sanction to the pen-holder’s yearning. The mail is official, it’s real.

Most of Wayne’s previous work is under the banner of satire and farce, with numerous credits in The New Yorker, the New York Times, Esquire, McSweeney’s, and on Comedy Central, so book's the lampoons are expected and expertly performed.

Justin Taylor depicts a generation raised on video games and cable-news politics, a nation where alcohol abuse and sexual discord are the main rites of passage.