Malaise

by Nancy Lemann

"Fleming Ford is an Alabama girl exiled to the West Coast, where she is torn between devotion to her husband and a dangerous love for an older Englishman who seems to embody the formality and culture lacking in her new home. California is to Fleming a desert of many kinds, but ultimately she is reluctantly drawn into the culture that she satirizes - its beautiful vistas, its citizens' endless quest for wellness, the narcotic effect of its perpetual sun. She soon finds herself at the mall or with a botanist, facialist, yoga instructor, or visceral manipulator. She must come to terms with the inhabitants' ceaseless plea to relax, their phobia of weather, their love of malls.". "Newly pregnant with her third child while her geologist husband is away searching for water in the barren deserts of the American West, Fleming seeks relief in the companionship of Mr. Lieberman, a British mogul sojourning in Los Angeles. To her, he represents the tragic yet glamorous Old World, the milestones of