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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Journalist and author Rivka Tadjer’s chilling and darkly funny novel, Two Weeks Under, answers the daily din of our weight obsession with this question: If you could go under a completely safe, affordable, two-week vanity coma to lose weight, would you do it? Would you spring for a nose job while you’re under, since you don’t have to be awake for the two weeks you’d wear a bandage? And one last thing Tadjer would like to know: Size zero. Who decided that was a size?
Two Weeks Under explores the phenomenon of our self-loathing judgment and unrealistic challenge of trying to live some kind of natural life in a make-everything-perfect, you’re nothing without a brand name, YouTube culture. Without a natural life, we become alienated. If we’re alienated, what’s to become of our society?
In the cinematic Two Weeks Under, we are introduced to a new Manhattan spa called Monarch, where clients go under a medically induced vanity coma for two weeks to lose weight. With the Monarch Metamorphosis, you go in chubby caterpillar, come out of the cocoon a beautiful butterfly. The heroine, sophisticated, professional, and perennially single Elana Diamond, gets drawn into this world more easily than she could have ever imagined when she gets a call the morning of her 35th birthday from an intense, secretive reporter named Greg Thomas. He tells Elana that her sister committed suicide. But she didn’t know she had a sister.
Greg claims to be a friend, but he’s a little too knowledgeable, a little too resourceful. “I found you through FBI records. And some other private source files.”
“Who the hell are you?” Elana demands, and the story begins.
Reluctantly, Elana tries to find out who her sister was, why she killed herself, and what this man Greg Thomas has to do with it. Soon she discovers that her sister went under the Monarch Metamorphosis vanity coma diet. But all evidence has been erased. By the time she finds out what happened, she has stepped into something so deep she may not survive it. A kind doctor tries to help her, but it becomes clear that anyone who tries to help will be in danger. Battling her own demons, Elana must try to find enough evidence so that the truth will actually surface, whether or not she manages to live through it.
Tadjer’s metaphysical story is about one woman’s battle to overcome what makes her insecure, to hold onto to some semblance of a natural life in a techno world, to find balance. A byproduct of the truly great techno era in post-paranoid America is that our extreme nature has been let loose, turned inward, wreaking havoc and embracing visual perfection above all else. Two Weeks Under is written from a place of dark humor because ultimately it is optimistic. We can lasso what makes us insecure, rise above it, participate in and enjoy the ride of this big, wild, messy life for what it is.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rivka Tadjer is a sign-of-the-times author, who for 20 years has explored the sociological implications of our techno-centric era—how and why our behavior is changing. She has written for newspapers such as The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal Interactive, as well as many magazines, online outlets, and TV news. She has devoted a lot of ink to the issues of privacy, security, and identity. She turned to novel writing in order to explore core issues of our identity and culture with more depth and no inhibitions, examining what is happening now, and what is plausible. Visit www.rivkatadjer.com, where her blog reads like a mock investigative journalist’s Most Wanted list. She a wise-cracking watchdog for our shame, alienation, and identity issues, and intends to cut through them like butter. Or maybe hot buttered toast. Yum.
Book Summary:
Title: Two Weeks Under™
Authos: Rivka Tadjer
Publisher: The Conversation Group
ISBN: 978-1-4343-9188-9
6 x 9 hardback, 252 pp., price $24.99
Publication Date Dec. 13, 2008
The book is available to retail outlets through: authorhouse.com
Also available now on Amazon.com
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