When we first meet Mary, the character at the center of Catherine Lacey’s THE ANSWERS, she is undergoing a quiet kind of crisis. Burdened by debt, agonized by a variety of mysterious physical ailments, and saddled to a terrible job at a travel agency, she is in desperate need of a change. Her best friend, Chandra, recommends that she pursue a course of Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia (PAKing), which indeed does relieve her physical symptoms almost immediately. But they are also remarkably expensive, meaning that Mary has to pursue another job in order to maintain her therapy.

"At times, THE ANSWERS can leave readers feeling chilly, but it also offers numerous opportunities for reflection on modern culture, the limits of science and the mysteries of love."

So when Mary sees a mysterious announcement for a lucrative “income-generating experience,” she decides to pursue it, even through several rounds of bizarre interviews and background checks. It turns out that Mary is the perfect candidate for the position. She’s part of what’s been dubbed the “Girlfriend Experiment,” matching several different women with a single Hollywood star, each of them instructed to fill a certain need (the Maternal Girlfriend, the Anger Girlfriend, the Mundanity Girlfriend, etc.). Mary, who grew up homeschooled in an isolated, deeply religious household with virtually no contact with the outside world, is the perfect choice to be the Emotional Girlfriend. Since she had no familiarity with the movie star, she can approach him on a neutral, more genuine level.

After an opening section written from Mary’s first-person perspective, the book’s second part expands to offer glimpses into the lives and backstories of several other characters, including other women participating in the Girlfriend Experiment, the Hollywood star and his adoring assistant. Narratives of sexual and physical violence, emotional detachment and alienation run through these brief chapters, before the story returns to Mary’s increasingly isolated and disorienting perspective in the novel’s closing part.

Characters in THE ANSWERS can feel like types or tropes rather than fully realized human beings, but that’s kind of the point. The Girlfriend Experiment reduces individuals to a single trait, codifying behavior under the assumption that there can be a formula resulting in companionship, or emotional fulfillment, or catharsis, or any number of other functions intended to be served through romantic relationships.

“How to best love? How to know anything, for certain, in another’s heart?” These are the questions posed by the Girlfriend Experiment, and ostensibly answered in the most logical way possible. But logic only goes so far, as Mary’s story, and others, illustrates. At times, THE ANSWERS can leave readers feeling chilly, but it also offers numerous opportunities for reflection on modern culture, the limits of science and the mysteries of love.