National Network for Equitable Library Service

Everyone deals with grief in their own personal way. Take Carrie, for example. To get over her mother's death from ovarian cancer, she launches a passive-aggressive war with her fellow office workers, embarks on a campaign designed to let her ex-husband know she's over him (which naturally only pushes her teenage daughter farther away), and plots to rid herself of her mother's overweight cat, all the while consuming heroic quantities of red wine, spiked coffee, and coffin nails. Nobody's perfect. Situated at the midpoint between booze-soaked mayhem and middle-aged ennui, Things You've Inherited From Your Mother is a riotous assemblage of found objects, Choose Your Own Adventure-style in-jokes and useful facts about mice. In her startlingly funny first novel, Hollie Adams takes the conventional wisdom about 'likeable' literary heroines and shoves it down an elevator shaft.