A couple of strays

If you have seen the Sofia Coppola film Lost in Translation you already know the basic plot outline of Joshua Max Feldman's new novel Start Without Me: A man and woman, who under ordinary circumstances would have little in common, temporarily discover in each other the only person with whom they can communicate and reveal their true selves.

In the movie, the lonely pair are stuck in Japan, relieved to find another American to talk with. In the book, the two people meet on Thanksgiving, which in its own way can produce loneliness in some people.

Adam was once a promising musician whose career was cut short by alcoholism, which also contributed to his strained relationship with his family. Now recovering, he returns East to spend the holiday with relatives. It does not go well, and within hours he flees into the cold, not sure what he will do next.

At the airport he meets Marissa, a flight attendant with problems of her own. She is on her way to spend Thanksgiving with her husband and his family. But she has been unfaithful with an old boyfriend and has just learned she is pregnant. She doesn't want to get an abortion, but her husband is black and the boyfriend is white. To add to her stress, her father-in-law has political ambitions and has had a private investigator tailing her, so he already knows about the boyfriend. When she visits her mother, herself an alcoholic, the situation proves even worse than what she encounters at the home of her in-laws

Adam and Marissa spend most of the day together, revealing to each other both the best and worst truths about themselves. Feldman manages to make it believable that, no matter how many times the two part, they always somehow come together again. He describes them as "a couple of strays." They are two people loose with nowhere to go on a day when everybody is supposed to be somewhere.