{"product_id":"9780385551502","title":"Dear Monica Lewinsky","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom the acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eAmerican Mermaid\u003c\/i\u003e (“I loved it…and have never read anything like it”—Elizabeth Gilbert) comes a wise, funny, and wildly original examination of female desire and the price women pay for giving in to their appetites—starring an apparition of Monica Lewinsky.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Forty-five-year-old Jean Dornan cannot escape the shadow of something she did several decades ago. On a study abroad program to France in the summer of 1998, she embarked on a deeply inappropriate relationship with her professor. When the professor contacts her out of the blue to invite her to his retirement ceremony, she is jolted out of her malaise and filled with the need to understand why the affair derailed her life.\u003cbr\u003e    Rereading her old diaries, she is shocked to realize her relationship with the professor occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal, yet she never saw the parallels. In a frenzy of guilt and regret, she finds herself \u003ci\u003epraying \u003c\/i\u003eto Monica Lewinsky—as if she were some kind of secular saint, the patron of persecuted and demonized women, perhaps?—and begging Monica’s forgiveness for not understanding everything they had in common. To her shock, Saint Monica appears to her—like a saucy Ghost of Christmas Past—and leads her back in time to reassess what happened. Had Jean merely been weak, stupid, blind, as she has told herself for years? What was it about her that led her into the affair? What did she \u003ci\u003ereally\u003c\/i\u003e do that summer? \u003cbr\u003e    Told in flashbacks of those sunlit six weeks that changed Jean's life, interspersed with irreverent accounts of real female martyrs and visitations from Saint Monica offering insight about Jean’s younger self, \u003ci\u003eDear Monica Lewinsky\u003c\/i\u003e is a tender, hilarious, and thought-provoking examination of desire and how it shapes us. It is also a timely examination of what grace and forgiveness look like, in our lives and throughout history.","brand":"Julia Langbein","offers":[{"title":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |  Hardback  |  2026-04-14","offer_id":47340783468799,"sku":"9780385551502","price":39.99,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0329\/9075\/7001\/files\/BNCImageAPI_6ad32faa-6913-44e3-8aac-a8382368479d.jpg?v=1760025844","url":"https:\/\/riverbookshop.com\/products\/9780385551502","provider":"River Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}