Before Elvis There Was Nothing

Wrapping her head in a turban so as not to arouse suspicions of the beauty-fixated clients at her spa, Cass must conceal a six-inch rhinoceros horn that has suddenly sprouted from her forehead. The women she cares for depend on her, hoping that maybe a little of her prettiness will rub off on them. "It's not looking healthy that's important," whispers one of Cass's clients to her between glue treatments to her weave, "it's looking normalthat counts."

In this surreal, light satire, Foos toys with the destructive nature of beauty obsession, both toward oneself and through the idolatry of pop-music stars. Cass and her sister Lena have been abandoned by their Elvis-fixated parents several years before, on the tenth anniversary of the King's death. Lena never recovered, and now an agoraphobe, she stuffs her face with Xanax and speaks to an "Internet shrink" for hours in a chat room. She copes with her anxiety by watching Elvis's Aloha from Hawaii and listening to Cass retell entertaining anecdotes about their missing parents' days as roadies for an Elvis impersonator. For the two sisters, Elvis is a reminder of their greatest heartache as well as a reprieve from their neuroses. Foos skillfully balances their burgeoning melodramas with their compassion toward one another, resulting in some very moving scenes.

Trivia and well-researched Elvis minutiae bounce in and out of the narrative structure, which loosely follows the daily growth of Cass's horn through her admittance to a top-secret plastic surgery facility, populated by a wily bunch of other absurd man-imals. However, as Foos tries to integrate tenuous connections between the details of Elvis's life and those of her characters, she loses hold on her satirical tone and the writing becomes increasingly elliptical, leaving the reader hoping for something in the story to coalesce. The loose ends accumulate, and the novel fails to tighten them.—Scott Stealey