Love Street

`Susan Perly lays down a cool, existential get-it-off coda about jazz, sex and digging the Holy Grail. This is Johnny Fever at Mach 2.'

You have never read a book like Susan Perly's first novel Love Street. Open it anywhere, and out comes the voice of Miss Mercy, late-night radio DJ in New Orleans with her jive talk and old vinyl platters. Sam Cooke, Percy Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Van Morrison, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, war, art, peacetime -- Miss Mercy talks to the lonely. She swings, she bebops, growls, prays, plays blues, soul, jazz, R&B. Miss Mercy is the modern woman of all ages. She is lo-fi, urban, mysterious. She is wacky, she cascades sheets of sound. Remember when you used to listen to a radio under your pillow? Love Street is a radio novel from that world. Miss Mercy -- the sultry vinyl pirate, the Mistress of the Mike -- aims to seduce you. To remind you of the fun of words, to woo you back to the love of reading.

`Love Street is Toronto writer Susan Perly's first book. In it she fuses her experience as a war correspondent, her considerable opinions on a wide range of subjects and a love of jazz to create the astonishing Miss Mercy. Beware when Miss Mercy says: ``Let me be intimate with you.'' She means it. There is an intensity to her that embarrasses. You wish you didn't know about her shingles or what happened in that elevator. You go to turn her off but you can't, because she's funny, provocative and cool, because she knows the truth of our condition.'