The problem with reading this light novel on two weekdays in the fall is that it's really meant for a frigid, miserable winter weekend when one wants a companionable but undemanding comrade while curled under a comforter. A handful of other novels (and memoirs) in the last few years have explored this theme-- a 40ish mother unexpectedly widowed-- with deeper literary reflection. But Manless in Montclair is meant for readers in search of an escape who will keep turning pages at least as long as it takes to get caught up in the story and find out how it ends. Edelman does this with a "by-the-grace-of-God" voyeurism, and a likeable searching-for-love main character. Her Isabel combines enough measured doses of wit and wisdom with an engaging enough comic sensibility, and a pragmatic and sprightly personality.

When Michael, her husband of 12 years dies, Isabel's rabbi informs her she need only wait 30 days until beginning the search for a new husband-- and the hunt is more or less on. No one, least of all Izzy, wants her to be manless, and so she progresses diligently through the new-age maze of husband-hunting-- including matchmaking websites, a seedy singles organization, speed dating, and dinner parties arranged by paid consultants-- toting up a bulging diary of dates and disasters.

Meanwhile, she questions her own motives and wavers between a withering self-esteem to match her own "five-foot zero" stature and a developing sense of independent bravado. As she meanders, Izzy exposes the scamming singles agency on the nightly news, slides effortlessly into the main breadwinner role, and learns first-hand about  "friends with benefits" through an early relationship with a guy who is not made of the "new Daddy" material her daughter begs for.

Edelman, also the author of the 1997 fashion retrospective The Little Black Dress, is a Montclair, New Jersey public relations specialist and mother of two, who lost her own husband unexpectedly a few years ago. The heroine of the novel shares an awful lot of her creator's history, and Edelman's memoir-as-fiction base serves her, though at times unevenly. She infuses her prose with detailed anecdotes and wry observations that carry the surprise and verve only true-to-life events can offer; at other times, the story-telling seems to incorporate what may be part of the "real" story, but makes for slightly dysfunctional fiction.

Still, I liked Izzy enormously, cursed her fate, and wanted her to find happiness; and since that seems to be all the novel demands, Edelman had me, at least most of the time. She plays up the humor bound to evolve even from catastrophe, and gives her bright Izzy a prototypically cloying Jewish mother, the salty best friend, and a steadying sister, who all read as believable and reassuringly typical. Edelman hits a few mournfully pitch-perfect notes with her descriptions of navigating grief waves and the sad sweetness of her remembered courtship. The work of becoming a single person again, along with the guilt and pride inherent in the transformation, which in a longer, more probing work might have taken center stage, here plays an underlying role to the romp of rebound dating.

The Montclair of the title will be familiar to New York City metropolitan area residents as the true-life and uniquely arty, upscale, and coveted New Jersey suburb where Manhattanites often decamp when they yearn for backyards and (more) affordable third bedrooms. Edelman makes far too little use of its charms and churlish clique culture.  Missing too, are more well-developed characterizations for Izzy's two daughters, especially since one figures pivotally in the predictable, but nevertheless satisfying climax when Izzy finds what (or who?) she really needs.

Edelman seems to be keenly aware of her genre-- somewhere between chick lit, not-too-deep memoir, and "I Dated a Dick." She delivers just enough carefully coy dialogue to stay entertaining and enough poignant coincidence, irony, tragedy, and truculence to remain relevant. At times, she knows when to keep her reader guessing (or hoping). One afternoon, Izzy bundles herself around her dead husband's gym bag in his car on a humid August afternoon and emerges to find a feather the color of Michael's lake blue eyes, which turns out to belong to a prospective date. In other sections, the writer sometimes eschews specifics and details for overview, or too-clearly telegraphs upcoming story twists.

To match the grief which attacks Izzy in unexpected spasms, Edelman keeps the reader guessing about whether she dreads the "manless" moniker, if it suggests a uniquely suburban Montclairian judgment, or if being manless, at least temporarily, morphs into an unwanted but earned badge of honor. For all Isabel's whining about not wanting to be alone for another holiday, holy day or hike to the farmer's market, she wades through her new widowhood with a lurching sense of awareness that while a man may fill up her emotional life again, he might also merely fill a void.

Along the way, Izzy begins to fill that in for herself-- with a new closeness with her two girls, with friends, work, talks with her step-sons, and memories that become safer to visit as time passes. Edelman makes the careworn but perennially true case that only when a woman has given up on a man making her happy, does she eventually find one who does. But without a more finely etched internal journey, the reader is left unsure if the lesson has been learned or merely arrived at through a series of unfortunate events.

While the final chapters are slightly clichéd and predictable, they do the job credibly enough. The book may leave a few too many unturned stones for some readers, but many will find themselves, as I did, from the start, wanting to simultaneously hug Izzy, to talk some sense into her, and to help her plot new man-meeting schemes.

Lisa Romeo's essays and other nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, literary journals, and two recent anthologies, and her poetry has appeared in Literary Mama and the Bad Mother Chronicles. She lives in the New York metropolitan area with her husband and two sons, and is finishing an MFA degree in creative nonfiction through the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine.

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