Julie Hecht’s novel, The Unprofessionals  and her short story collection, Do the Windows Open?… I’m going to cheat and use the review from The New Yorker – because frankly I find it impossible to give a coherent summary of either the novel or her book of short stories. (Would anyone who hadn’t ridden the Hampton jitney find her title short story as hilarious as those who have?) She smashes every guideline I’ve ever given in my fiction courses; there’s no plot, no character development, and it’s all focused on intense belly button gazing by the narrator.  But I love her writing and read both books turning a bright shade of green.  For a broad range of reactions to her books go to reader’s comments listed on Amazon.

From The New Yorker
Hecht’s first novel revisits the batty, obsessive narrator of her short-story collection "Do the Windows Open?," a photographer who continuously criticizes everyone who doesn’t share her preoccupation with organic vegetables, vitamins, and plain white cotton shirts. Now the narrator is more self-aware, and she occasionally even shows sympathy for others. The story itself charts the course of her friendship, conducted in endless late-night phone calls, with a kindred spirit of sorts, a young man whom she has known since he was a child, and whose fastidious revulsion with the world around him equals her own. His witty tirades—he loathes the tastes of his own generation and longs for the seemlier style of the nineteen-fifties—mask a dark self-destructiveness that makes the narrator’s eccentricities look trivial.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker