I Went to Vassar for This? - Softcover

Ambitious female ad exec Cathy Voorhees cracks her head on the glass ceiling, is fired from her job, gets knocked out by the glass door of her exploding microwave, and ends up awakening back in the twentieth century. It's 1959, and all the female hausfraus look like June Cleaver, wearing pearl necklaces and frilly aprons. Reader Stephanie Brush maps Cathy's battle to go back to the future. Her bouncy, lively presentation is enhanced by some truly hilarious moments, but her strident delivery quickly becomes a liability. This is a comic situation that could have been funnier with a better narration. M.T.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

After a TV dinner explodes in her microwave, modern New York City girl Cathy Vorhees wakes up in 1959, setting in motion this inventive romantic comedy from Neale (Calendar Girl). Mortified to find herself living the life of uptight Cathy Voight, office tyrant and recipe creator, Cathy bravely tries to "relax and enjoy my psychosis" with the help of her nifty '50s flatmates Tilly and Miranda, who think she's suffered an electric shock. More often, Cathy reacts like a movie heroine waking up next to a strange man "with absolutely no memory of how... the knife sticking out of his chest got there." When she isn't expressing shock at all the pork products, fur coats and sexual harassment in the workplace, she's trying to make a confidante out of hunky Hank, owner of her apartment building, and to find a way home. While some of Cathy's actions are out of character for a savvy city girl (i.e., brainlessly blurting out future events like the Kennedy assassination to Hank), she's got an enjoyable, sarcastic narrative voice that carries readers from confusion and despair ("why hadn't that microwave outright killed me?") to a You-go-girl! finale that's sure to please. (June)
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