"Tart is my favorite word. I love what it stirs in the
mind -- the synesthesia of flavor mixing with colors: reds,
oranges, and apple-greens, gleaming with cheap temptation,
like Jolly Ranchers. It's been a goal of my twenties to live
a tart life; I want everything I do to have that sharpness,
that edge of almost-too-out-there to be tasty, but not
quite."
Meet Claudia Bloom. She's having one of those years. First
she steals her ex's VW bus and drives it from Austin to
Santa Cruz, where it promptly explodes. Next she lets
herself be rescued by Clay, a cute DJ on a motorcycle, falls
hard and meets his somehow-never-mentioned-estranged wife
while searching frantically for her panties. She tries to
forget about Clay and focus on her tenuous new career
teaching theater at UC Santa Cruz, only to discover Clay's
wife is her colleague and his mother is her boss. Could it
get any worse? When her neo-Deadhead cousin shows up with a
horse-size mutt, Rex, and the two of them take up residence
on her couch, Claudia's pretty sure things have hit rock bottom.
Set in the uber-hip beach town of Santa Cruz, this novel
explores the rocky terrain of family secrets, forbidden
fruit and all things Tart.
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