Ask a Bookseller: ‘Honey’ by Victor Lodato

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.Click here. Step aside, Olive Kitteridge. There’s a new woman in town who’s difficult but loveable, complex and, in this case, fabulous. It’s Honey Fasinga.Sheila Burns, of Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, Ore., recommended “Honey” by Victor Lodato, which came out this week.She and her fellow booksellers couldn’t resist the 82-year-old protagonist. Honey Fasinga escaped her toxic, New Jersey mobster family as a young woman and cultivated a life full of art and fashion.Now, she’s returning home, only to find all the bullies still exist. Honey is determined to stand up to them, both for her sake and for the sake of others in her life.Like Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive Kitteridge,” “Honey” is a character-driven novel. Honey is smart, artsy, sexual, vain and very much her own person. She treats high fashion like armor, donning her wig, Chanel and heels even to walk to the drug store.Burns says an advanced copy of the novel was a favorite among her colleagues at the bookstore, adding, “One of my booksellers called her an avatar of fabulousness.”