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April 5, 2010
Strauss's stellar first novel (after story collection The Joy of Funerals
) chronicles the loneliness of New Yorkers loosely connected by the swanky Four Seasons hotel. Hotel manager Morgan, Strauss's strongest protagonist, longs for the company of her older sister, Dale, who died of leukemia as a child. She's in a go-nowhere relationship and hoping to find a friend in Trish Hemingway, an artist and gallery owner who reminds her of Dale. Trish, meanwhile, is coming to terms with growing apart from her best friend, and she's not fully over her fiancé, who left her shortly before they were to be married. Subplots play out and scenes are revisited courtesy of a number of perspectives—hotel employees, friends and family, hotel guests—creating a near mosaic with twinges of darkness, thanks largely to the strange and unexpected things that go on behind hotel doors: the s&m gear Morgan steals after snooping in a guest's room, an abused woman found tied to a bed. Strauss's ending, which strives to be hopeful, comes off as abrupt; otherwise, this is quite sublime.

April 1, 2010
From Strauss (stories: The Joy of Funerals, 2003, etc.), a novel concerning a Manhattan Four Seasons manager who witnesses the alarmingly bleak lives of women (herself included) confronting the loss of youth.

Morgan, 32, is haunted by her sister Dale's death from leukemia when both were children. She alone in her family appears to still mourn Dale, and she can't get close to her mother, who cares only for conspicuous consumption and her clique of ladies who lunch. Morgan has seen her Uncle Marty, a prominent shrink, escorting female patients to rooms at the Midtown Four Seasons, where she's division manager. Morgan's inner emptiness—she's just broken up with her too-dull, too-safe boyfriend Bernard—prompts her to take brief vacations on the wild side while at work. There's the busboy she trysts with in the kitchen pantry. There are the hotel rooms she"inspects" at random, pilfering objects including an SM leather brace, which she finds oddly comforting to wear. Morgan encounters other women—guests, vendors, employees or clients of the Four Seasons—each of whom occupies her own section of the novel. Anne, a novice concierge, is obsessed with luck, charms and omens. Svelte, elegant Trish, adopted child of famous parents, struggles to distinguish herself, opening a gallery and hosting a weight-loss party for her BFF Olive, who, distressingly, is shedding Trish along with the extra pounds. Ellen, traumatized by two miscarriages, is baffled by the refusal of her husband and gynecologist to believe she's several months pregnant. Mississippi native Franny, despite a lucrative career and a nice apartment, envies her blissfully coupled and child-blessed neighbors. Aging rocker Louise checks into the Four Seasons to detox. Trouble is, without coke, booze and pills, the space inside Lou's head is as claustrophobic as her locked hotel room. Robin, a downtrodden younger sister, takes bizarre revenge on her manipulative sibling Vicki.

Despite some unpolished prose, these New York stories, utterly wrenching with pessimistic undercurrents, will remind some readers of Parker—as in Dorothy, not Sarah Jessica.

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Starred review from May 1, 2010
The women in Strauss mesmerizing novel all suffer from an inability to connect with family, with men, with potential friends. Morgan, a 32-year-old manager at the upscale Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan, is still devastated more than two decades after the death of her older sister Dale. Constantly wondering how her life would be different if her sister was still alive, and feeling closer to Dale than anyone living, Morgan resents that her parents have bottled up their grief in a way she cant. At work, Morgan sneaks into random hotel rooms to swipe prescription meds and study the belongings of the hotels various patrons. Strauss gives readers a glimpse into the lives of the women whose paths Morgan crosses, from the aging rock star whose publicist checks her into the hotel in a last-ditch effort to get her to sober up, to the obsessive-compulsive hotel employee whose boyfriend commits the ultimate act of betrayal, to a decorator so desperate to get pregnant that she comes to believe she actually is. Lonely and longing to be otherwise, the characters in this moving novel are achingly sympathetic, their plights eminently relatable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)