Read Fast Eat Slow is pleased to announced a new award, the PB&J award.

This high honor recognizes books so engaging that readers are willing to risk late fees on the bills, haystack-sized laundry piles, and the shame of looking like a bum just to finish the darn book.

Children of these eager readers will be told to fix themselves a sandwich and leave mommy alone. Wise children will soon understand that an undistracted mother can finish her book in a day, maybe a day and a half, and then they will once again receive clean shirts and cleverly packed lunches. Just be patient. (Unless mommy gets hooks on a book series; then the situation is a little more grave.)

And Read Fast Eat Slow would like to present this award to Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray.

We start when Clover Hobart, a fifty-something Ohio gardening columnist, takes a shower, looks in the mirror and she’s not there. She wipes away the steam and she’s still not there, but her toothbrush floats in the air, as does her bathrobe.

Clover flickers in and out for a few days, but eventually disappears for good. And she waits for her family to notice. Surely her pediatrician husband will sense that something is off when he comes home for dinner. Surely after he crouches down and scratches the dog’s ears, he will stand up, look at her full on and notice there is no head sticking out of her turtleneck. Surely when he reaches across the bed for her later that night . . .

Or maybe Clover should just tell people, straight up. They might ask questions. “What happened? Is it contagious?”

Or maybe Clover’s invisibility is nothing new. How long since her family has looked up at the breakfast table and noticed who is pouring their orange juice? What about those conversations with her husband where she asks about his dreams and he fails to ask about hers?

Maybe, just maybe, invisibility has its perks. What can a no-see-um woman accomplish when she finds herself in the middle of crime and cruelty? When she hears her son making plans to get a tattoo? When she has to catch a flight to Philadelphia?:

“I knew that flying was a drag but it wasn’t until I could step outside the vastly complicated and demeaning process of trying to board a plane that I could see how bad it was. These people were herded like sheep, snapped at, admonished, redirected, bossed around like a bunch of little sisters, and they took it all mindlessly for fear that standing up for oneself in the name of good manners and common decency would get them booted from the line.”

Indeed, author Ray dwells so long and thoroughly on the sad details of modern plane-boarding that I wonder if the idea for her delightful book was born while she clutched her roller-suitcase and stared at all the other passengers stuck beside her in the snaking line.

I won’t reveal any more of the fun surprises in these 246 pages.

Just stock up on peanut butter, on boxes of Cheerios. Warn your children. Mommy’s not going to hear a thing you say until Tuesday or so.

Then open Ray’s book and enjoy.

Photo credit: Wootang01 via Visual hunt / CC BY-ND