Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms: Chronicle of One of the Strangest Stories Ever to Be Rumoredabout Around New York

In an unusual and funny story, New York City resident Jocelyn Guenevere Machantiere, recently divorced, finds herself in financial straits and spends much of her time wandering the city intent on finding the cleanest public restrooms. 35,000 first printing.

The famed author of The Gingerman shows--in this angst-and-arsenic-laced little bonbon- -that there's plenty of wit and heart in the writer yet. At 42, beautiful Mrs. Steve Jones lives a splendid life indeed in her fine mansion at number 17 Winnapoopoo Road in Scarsdale--or does, that is, until husband Steve leaves her for a bimbo: at which time Mrs. Jones, who's been born, bred (in a southern state), and educated always and only to be the finest and most tasteful and discriminating of ladies, washes her hands of him for keeps in exchange for the mansion itself and a cool hundred-sixty-five thousand. And? Well, a downward spiral follows, sadly, as inept and dishonest brokers lose huge gobs of Jocelyn's money (full name, if needed for reference: Jocelyn Guenevere Machantiere Jones), as classy neighbors begin to snub her, as she starts to drink more, and as she feels increasingly like the mad girl across the road who appears at the window from time to time, in handcuffs. Selling the mansion (after first shooting her TV set with a priceless shotgun) gives her money enough to survive by moving to an apartment in a lesser neighborhood--then to another in a still lesser neighborhood--and to continue doing the only thing she really wants, which is to make train trips into the city to visit the art museums and find clean bathrooms to pee in. One clean bathroom she knows of happens to be in a funeral parlor and--by now she's falling into true, suicidal despair--her chancing to use it at just a certain moment will have a huge effect (and at the same time none at all) on her fate. A brilliantly brief, gloriously irreverent, perfectly raunchy, wonderfully hilarious--and sad, melancholy, tearful look at one woman's life. (Eight illustrations by Elliot Banfield are just as good as the book.) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Readers of Donleavy's best-seller of 40 years ago, The Ginger Man, may be clamoring for this work; they'll find a moderately effective satire on an insipid, absurd, money-driven world. The story is told in first and third person from the point of view of the ironically named Jocelyn "Joy" Jones. After her husband leaves for a younger woman, she becomes increasingly isolated and angry at the world, and, of course, her fate worsens: her college kids want no part of her; bills mount; she sells her large Scarsdale house, but her financial investor loses all the proceeds. Then her appreciation for clean rest rooms, the great legacy of her grandmother, lands her in a funeral home on one of her day trips to Manhattan museums, where her casual signing of a ledger leads to a multimillion-dollar inheritance from a total stranger, an absurd reversal that cannot undo her suicidal fatigue with the emptiness money had once concealed from her. Jim O'Laughlin

This novella by the author of the classic The Ginger Man bills itself as a humorous fairy tale, but it's hard to sustain irony with a 19th-century prose style and a sophomoric plot. The life of Jocelyn Guenevere Marchantiere Jones has taken a dive. She is divorced and has lost all her money to bad investments. Her children no longer come to see her; her friends avoid her on the street. After losing her house, her upscale car, her downscale car, her job as a gift-wrapper, and her job as a waitress (as well as a few bullets to obnoxious guests and one recalcitrant TV), the elegant Mrs. Jones must resort to high-class whoring. Menopause and the geriatric scrap heap are next. The nicest things about Donleavy's book are the original illustrations by Elliott Banfield and the old-fashioned design. Not recommended.?Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, Ind.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.