Last Last Chance, the first novel from mediabistro.com instructor Fiona Maazel, is getting scads of attention. A recent Time Out New York article tracks the genesis of the novel along with its narrative threads, including a kosher chicken plant, a "superplague" infection and quarantine, addiction and rehab, and, P.S., reincarnation. This is the apocalyptic/hilarious yarn you'll be seeing people reading on the subway all summer.

We were at the book party last week, where Fiona's foreign mom, making a toast that provoked daughterly squirms of embarrassment, showed that she could also turn a phrase. Recounting how surprised she was to learn so much from her child's book, she exclaimed, "It is like the eggs teaching the chickens!"

Blurb alert: Newsday said great things about the book last Sunday, concluding that Fiona "has pulled off a remarkable feat of the imagination."

UPDATE: Glowing review in Sunday's NYT Book Review. "Last Last Chance isn't your average novel, thanks in no small part to Maazel's funny, lacerating prose."

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