Strangers on Earth

THE STORY: Priss, a high-strung, beautiful Boston heiress, rents a rundown New York apartment with her sardonic Radcliffe roommate, Margaret. Each befriends Pony, a confused would-be actor and Mormon folk singer from Utah whose painfully repressed background leaves him vulnerable to imprinting romantically on anyone who takes an interest in him. The problem is that Pony really wants Hank, Priss' wanna-be-Republican boyfriend and boss. Hank is fond of Pony but finds little time to maintain a friendship with him, let alone a relationship with Priss. Though Hank and Priss finally go their separate ways, Hank and Pony achieve professional success while crossing paths along the way. On the other end of the spectrum is Margaret's edgy courtship with Mutt, a slobbish but engaging handy man who's been hired to remodel the apartment. Doubting even the minutest possibility that a worthwhile relationship exists, Margaret deliberately fences herself off from sex and emotional entanglement with a nonstop barrage of self-deprecating, intellectual banter whose withering effect almost succeeds in leaving her isolated and yearning for more. Mutt, constantly intrigued by Margaret, perseveres through his own emotional landmine, to win Margaret over to see his side and to start living with him. Through it all, these achingly recognizable characters display a bittersweet appreciation of half-happy endings and the truest survival skills of the socially satiric.O'Donnell, Mark is the author of 'Strangers on Earth' with ISBN 9780822213505 and ISBN 0822213508.