If You're Not Yet Like Me

ADVANCE PRAISE "Why, when I was reading this extraordinary--no other word for it--novella, did I start thinking of Henry James? Thinking, specifically, of his adventures in human desire, cruelty, and perversity as found in The Turn of the Screw, The Portrait of a Lady,and other works of highly civilized terror. Lepucki's work is very much of the here and now--funny, smart, sardonic, and fully sexed--but she goes at her subject with the same flaying relentlessness as H. James. I'll use that word again: Extraordinary. This little book is the real deal." -Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters With Che Guevara "Edan Lepucki's sly, smart novella is never quite a love story-in fact, rarely has the edict 'only connect' seemed more difficult to enact than among her small tribe of underachievers. Sex, however, retains its reliable consequences. And therein lies the beauty and the gut punch of this sneaky, deft book." -Michelle Huneven, author of Blame "If You're Not Like Yet Like Me tells quite a few damn good jokes before it decides to twist your heart apart. Gracefully written, barbed and biting; a touching meditation on the mistakes we make before meeting the ones who truly deserve our love." -Victor LaValle, author of Big Machine ABOUT THE AUTHOR Edan Lepucki is a graduate of Oberlin College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her short fiction has been published in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Narrative Magazine, Meridian, and FiveChapters, among other publications, and she is the winner of the 2009 James D. Phelan Award. She is a staff writer for The Millions and lives in Los Angeles, California, where she was born and raised.