The portable Veblen, by Elizabeth McKenzie

Veblen, a thirty-year-old free-spirited young woman, is named after that Veblen, as in Thorstein, the economist who wrote The theory of the leisure class.  She is also an amateur scholar of his works.  She lives in a run-down cottage in an un-gentrified section of Palo Alto, translates works from Norwegian, and is employed in low-level jobs, most recently as an assistant in a neurology lab at Stanford.  When a chance encounter brings her together with neurologist researcher Paul Veerland, the attraction is instantaneous and within three months, they are planning their wedding.  Paul has invented a tool that looks like a significant advance in the treatment of traumatic brain injuries and is excited that the Defense Department and a major pharmaceutical company are eager to test and acquire it. Both Paul and Veblen come from “challenging” families.  In her case, her mother is a self-involved hypochondriac who really does know more about her supposed illnesses than the doctors – she’s married to a long-suffering second husband, and Veblen’s father is incarcerated in a mental institution.  Paul has an older “special needs” brother, prone to torturing his younger sibling, and his parents are aging hippies.  He avoids his family whenever he can.  But marriage plans inevitably bring the families together.  And then there’s the situation with the squirrel that lives in her attic and is, for Veblen, a totemic spirit.  A fun and thoughtful book.  428 pp.