Pink Slip

A novel about the inescapable bonds of family and personal history, Pink Slip asks the question, in love, what must we reveal about ourselves?

Twenty-five-year-old Lisa Diodetto needed a change. Her job editing holocaust memoirs for a prestigious New York publishing company barely paid the rent, and an ill-thought out affair with a married man had left her flattened by the wheels of romance. At the urging of her first cousin and lifelong best friend Dodie, she left New York for a job upstate in the editorial department of a big pharmaceutical company. It was a clean slate far from her working class upbringing in an Italian-American New Haven neighborhood, and she planned to make the most of it.

Enter Mr. Eben Strauss, Vice-President of Corporate Development. A man of careful composure, a restrained sense of humor, and impeccable manners. A man who certainly wouldn't appreciate Lisa's big mouth and hot temper. A man who would never dream of compromising his position or anyone else's with any kind of workplace impropriety. A man surprisingly attracted by--and attractive to--Lisa.

The relationship that ensues illustrates the very real dangers of falling in love-particularly falling in love with your boss, particularly falling in love with a boss who doesn't know the half of your personal history. Lisa is embarrassed to tell Strauss about her past--her crazy family, her wild escapades with Dodie--but she soon discovers that Strauss is keeping secrets, too. How both of them try to accept the truth about each other makes for a funny, sharp, and moving novel about the difficulties of intimacy and the imperfections of love.

Rita Ciresi is the author of Mother Rocket, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the novels Pink Slip and Blue Italian. She lives with her husband and daughter in Florida.


From the Trade Paperback edition.