In this deliciously affecting debut novel, Katherine Taylor is both the muddled heroine and the author, allowing fiction to wink at real life in each alluring chapter. By turns bittersweet and comic, Rules for Saying Goodbye features a family rife with quirks; Kate’s mother, named Elizabeth Taylor, believes her daughter can find hope only in a life far removed from their Fresno, California, community. Spending her adolescence at an East Coast prep school, Kate is introduced to a scene where the cocaine is “so good it’s pink” and a friend’s Manhattan grandmother believes girls are never too young to experience cocktail hour. Propelled into quasi-adulthood in the 1990s, Kate copes with unsuitable men, exasperating jobs, and the constant, tantalizing yearning that plagues her generation. Blending the brio of Melissa Bank with the wickedly funny candor of Nick Hornby, Rules for Saying Goodbye brilliantly captures a seductive, endlessly entertaining world.