Jessica Shattuck
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From the author of The Hazards of Good Breeding, a uniquely modern chronicle of conception in the age of infinite possibility.
Two years ago, Neil Banks walked into a bathroom in the Pacific Fertility Center to provide his former college girlfriend, Jenny Callahan, with the biological material needed to conceive a child. Becoming a father was not part of the deal; adrift in his post-modern Los Angeles lifestyle, he signed away all paternity rights. But on the day of the baby's christening, Neil turns up at the church. His unexpected – and unauthorized – return to Jenny's privileged east coast world sends a shockwave through the families of Jenny and her two college roommates—and sets off this deeply funny and keenly observed novel about fertility, love, and American excess.
Coming out August 2009
"PERFECT LIFE is a vivid, fascinating snapshot of the way some of us live now. Jessica Shattuck's engrossing, deceptively ambitious novel explores a wide range of subjects--from the logistics of adultery and the complexities of friendship to the nuts and bolts of video game design and pharmaceutical marketing--with a shrewd and sympathetic eye."
--Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children, Election, and The Abstinence Teacher