You or Someone Like You: A Novel [Paperback]

“Chandler Burr’s challenging first novel is many things: a glimpse into Hollywood culture, an argument about religious identity, a plea for the necessity of literature. This is a roman that needs no clefs.” —Washington Post

New YorkMagazinecallsYou or Someone Like You,“The highbrow humanist name-dropping book of the summer.” The remarkable first novel by Chandler Burr, theNew York Timesscent critic and author ofThe Perfect Scent,is funny, smart, and provocative—an extraordinarily ambitious work of fiction that succeeds on many different levels. It is a book David Ebershoff, (authorofThe 19th Wife) enthusiastically recommends “for anyone who defiantly clings to the belief that a book can change our lives.”

Anne Rosenbaum leads a life of Los Angeles privilege: the wife of a Hollywood executive, Howard Rosenbaum, and mother of their teenage son, Sam. Years ago Anne and Howard met studying literature at Columbia—she, the daughter of a British diplomat from London; he, a boy from an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn.

When one of Howard's friends asks Anne to make a reading list, she agrees and soon finds herself leading a book club for the industry elite. But when a crisis of identity turns Howard back toward the Orthodoxy he left behind, Anne must set out to save what she values above all else: her husband's love.

An ambitious debut novel...suggests the literary scope of Harold Bloom and the thematic concerns of Bernard Malamud...Mr. Burr may be the scent critic for the New York Times, but the ideas he tackles in his novel are hardly airy confections... -Wall Street Journal

...This new novel questioning the merits of religion comes as a bit of a surprise from The New York Times perfume critic...but Burr has proved to be much more than a hack with aló4