It took a little longer than expected, but this contributor finally slept off the holiday hangover, peeled off those formfitting sweats, and stretched out to fully embrace 2008 ... only to find we'd overlooked our copy of the anticipated first novel by Instant Love author Jami Attenberg, The Kept Man. And what better way to dive into a new year than with a healthy serving of guilt paired with a side dish of underage Polish chicks in skimpy sundries? It's practically the American way!

In an engaging twist on the landmark Terry Schiavo case, Brooklynite Jarvis Miller's husband goes into a coma following a tumble from a ladder in his art studio. What follows is Jarvis's dead-end journey of self-doubt and hope, all the while sightseeing through that glorious epicenter of gloom, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Attenberg tackles the situation with perfect pitch, riffing on the resulting turmoil when a woman who vowed "till death do us part" stops short of this unorthodox variety of vegetable gardening.

All hopes of Jarvis ever moving forward are dashed by, among other things, the eerie sight of her bedridden spouse smiling—caused by involuntary spasms rather than a conscious response. Martin Miller, the near-dead husband, has spent some six years in suspended animation, and Jarvis has been resigned to her tiresome cycle—until she joins "The Kept Men," a pack of three househusbands who meet at a laundromat on Tuesdays. It is in this company that she is awoken from her own catatonic existence, shown the light by way of her husband's man-whore tendencies.

Attenberg peels back the countless layers of "plug-pulling" to create a sharply focused narrative, pumping the issue upright with effortless turns of phrase and accounts of the peculiar behaviors in the couple's unique relationship (like, say, sweet Jesus, going down on the comatose Martin every Wednesday!). Attenberg has a gift for dynamic characterization, and Jarvis—though a self-indulgent, needy mess who believes the world exists for the sole purpose of teaching her a lesson—is a full, multidimensional individual, complete with her desperate need of a good dicking.