The reviews have been mixed, at best. The New York Times daily review trashed the book, calling it "dreadful," but the Sunday review called it "a splendidly perceptive joke about the freaky helixes of cultural evolution." She's been panned almost as much as she's been praised.

    For booksellers, that kind of discrepancy often means bigger sales.

    "You can't use any of the regular adjectives to describe her work, love, fantastic, they don't apply," said Barnes & Noble fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley. "Mostly it's her writing that draws you in, and makes you think. A lot of times I have zero willingness to read it, but I always do because she's so compelling."

    Homes says it comes from the same observations that fuel her other novels. She's always been an observer, she said, often on the sidelines because she is shy. Homes used writing as a way to reach people. "On the other hand, you're still sort of protected in your bubble," she said of writing. "It just felt safer."

    Homes comes from a very creative bunch. "I come from a funny family from Washington. My parents were very left-wing," she said. "We couldn't eat grapes not picked by union workers, that sort of thing."

    She attended the prestigious Iowa Writer's Workshop and later taught at Columbia while she wrote novels, but stopped to focus on writing full time. Enditem

    (Agencies)