"It seems solid enough, the world," Davis writes, but by the time we read that sentence she has already convinced us that nothing, not even an innocent stroll taken by three 12-year-old girls, is as it seems.

This novel is about what happens one summer in a New England town called Varennes. The plot, if you can call it that, has many characters and encompasses many stories, of marriage and divorce, old age and youth, of loss, yearning and the epiphanies of everyday life. But there's also a strangeness to it (one of the strolling girls is able to bring dead creatures back to life), which creates a sense that Davis is only keeping us guessing, that soon something will happen and it will be very bad. That's when she reminds us that life in a town goes on, and that tragedy inevitably becomes both history and legend.

This wild work of fiction is grounded by its author's virtuosity. Even in its weirdest moments, she is in control. And when we close the book after following the bread crumbs she has left for us, it's as if we emerge from a dream. Not a good dream or bad, but the one inspired by the trickery of life itself.

This is a thought-provoking book even if you're not among those described in the title. Drawing on interviews with men and women in their 20s and 30s (her age group), Straus explains why it has been difficult for so many to find long-lasting love. Self-absorption and self-indulgence have a lot to do with it, although she uses gentler vocabulary.

Many of her peers have "checklists" of attributes they require in potential mates and won't settle for less. With lots of choices and no skill at compromise, they use the Internet and "speed dating" to audition soul mates. But in poignant conversations with her parents, who have been married for 42 years, Straus learns that "soul mates are made, not born." Her father was not her soul mate when they married, her mother insists, "but he is now."

During her research for this book, Straus "stopped expecting to have true love without working at it," and ended up in a serious relationship. And she'll never forget the man who said he wanted a woman who "took his breath away" when she walked into a room. "He's still alone," Straus writes, "and waiting to be breathless."

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