I drank this book down in a day–partly because it was a deceptively easy read, drifting effortlessly from one word to the next the way its protagonist drifts from house to house, skating over unpleasantness in a painkiller haze. Partly because she is constantly skirting dangerous situations during her tense week of homelessness after being ejected from her lover’s home, waiting for the Labor Day party where she is certain she will reunite with him. This book made me think of the TV series Revenge–a soapy, suspenseful show which both rebukes and luxuriates in the trappings of wealth–and the movie Hustlers, albeit without the humor of the latter. You want the interloper to win.