'Jana Casale's brilliant, singular, gripping debut affected me more than any novel I've read this year. Lively and disarmingly honest, The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky is a remarkable literary feat-bracingly funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and truly feminist in its insistence that the story it tells is an essential one. Over the course of her experiences Leda comes to the universal revelation that the best-laid-plans are not always the path to utter fulfillment and contentment, and in reality there might be no such thing.

In a collage of these small moments, we see the work-both visible and invisible-of a woman trying to carve out a life of meaning. As the days, years, and decades of the rest of her life unfold, we see all of the things Leda does instead, from eating leftover spaghetti in her college apartment, to fumbling through the first days home with her newborn daughter, to attempting (and nearly failing) to garden in her old age. So she promptly buys a book and never-ever-reads it. But Leda's left with one imperative thought- she decides she wants to read Noam Chomsky. Their fleeting, awkward exchange stalls before flirtation blooms.

Leda hopes that, by engaging him, their banter will lead to romance. And for the cute boy reading American Power and the New Mandarins. We first meet Leda in a coffee shop on an average afternoon, notable only for the fact that it's the single occasion in her life when she will eat two scones in one day.

The girl who never read noam chomsky