Rating: 
Summary: All Fiction is Autobiography
Review: Ms. Loh's second novel is funny in parts, as well as energetic, but is also afflicted by cliche and a number of passages that seem like elaborate "in-jokes" about friends and family rather than fiction. The novel's protagonist, who shares the author's name, leads the reader through a series of vignettes in which the protagonist's self-loathing and frustration is rivalled only by her deep-seated need to be famous. This work will please fans of Ms. Loh's journalistic and NPR efforts--the Buzz Magazine piece about Ms. Loh's wedding and the LA Weekly "Against Writing" piece (an interesting soliloquy on basically how nobody should want to be a writer, author excepted) are rendered here in only mildly altered form, thanks to the very modern plot device of the deus ex dot.comica. The protagonist's "artist's journey", between ambition and abrasiveness is documented in some detail, though the narrative voice, like that in Ford's Good Soldier, tells us a "saddest story ever told" we never quite trust or buy into. Ms. Loh continues to be an intelligent and talented performer who can amuse in quick zingers, but whose work becomes tiring over time. Fans will love this work, because it sticks to the tried and true Loh themes. The rest of us will continue to wonder whether Ms. Loh's gift for writing will ever be put in the service of something a little less self-centered in its self-parody. Although Ms. Loh's "real" novel may someday come, this one is for fans only.
Rating: 
Summary: Wept with Laughter
Review: No one will be allowed to leave the book during the harrowing laser surgery sequence. Have never laughed so hard in my life.
Rating:
Summary: Bizarre. But NEVER boring.
Review: Sandra is ALL over the map here with topics for discussion, and they're all funny. Here's a book you can open at just about any page and find something to make you laugh. You can read A YEAR IN VAN NUYS again and again. And it's so REAL! Laugh-out-loud funny. I liked her parody of "A Year in Provence" -- very clever. I'd like to point that you don't have to live in Southern California to get the humor. My favorite part: Her annotated illustrations, like the maps of the brain.
Rating: 
Summary: A Strong, Confident Comic Voice
Review: Sandra may describe herself as a loser and the pathetic eye-bags queen of the world, but she has a strong, confident comic voice. Her blistering wit, her love of hyperbole, her close observation, her fearlessness, and the way she sees through everything remind me of Tom Wolfe--if Wolfe were a young-ish, ethnically-diverse woman writer living in an unfashionable L.A. suburb. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A Year in Van Nuys
Review: Sandra Tsing Loh is one of the funniest writers in the U.S. and this book is a must-read. She is devastatingly dead-on in her critiques of L.A.-area "society," which, even to someone like me who has never visited the area, means I never HAVE to, because I couldn't know it any better than through her eyes. Her frustration with, and hilariously expressed anger at, the superficiality of the society that she finds herself in is wonderful to read if you have ever experienced that profound shallowness masquerading as self-importance that she seems to confront in just about everyone she deals with every day. If you're an intelligent person trying to fit into American society, she is your spokesperson. It's so fulfilling to find someone who can articulate her disgust with cultural stupidity in such a hilarious way. It just makes you feel good. She is a national treasure.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly Great
Review: Sandra Tsing Loh's latest book reads more like a series of her hilarious essays cloaked in the guise of a novel. The novel's structure follows the character of "Sandra" through one year of her life as she struggles with writers block, perilously careens towards 36, and lives in of all places-horrors!-Van Nuys California. All of this is done with her bone dry humor in rare form, especially in the earlier half of the novel when she's expounding on the Zone diet, and Bally's Total Fitness. I loved the first two thirds, then felt it petered out a little by the end. Living in Los Angeles I found alot of the book really funny, although I don't know how people outside the city would relate. However most people in their mid thirties will find her characters plight at "what am I doing with my life" syndrome very real, funny, and a little bit scary. If you're a fan of David Sedaris, N.P.R., or just like to feel like you're hip and in the know, you'd probably enjoy this.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly Great
Review: Sandra Tsing Loh's latest book reads more like a series of her hilarious essays cloaked in the guise of a novel. The novel's structure follows the character of "Sandra" through one year of her life as she struggles with writers block, perilously careens towards 36, and lives in of all places-horrors!-Van Nuys California. All of this is done with her bone dry humor in rare form, especially in the earlier half of the novel when she's expounding on the Zone diet, and Bally's Total Fitness. I loved the first two thirds, then felt it petered out a little by the end. Living in Los Angeles I found alot of the book really funny, although I don't know how people outside the city would relate. However most people in their mid thirties will find her characters plight at "what am I doing with my life" syndrome very real, funny, and a little bit scary. If you're a fan of David Sedaris, N.P.R., or just like to feel like you're hip and in the know, you'd probably enjoy this.
Rating:
Summary: Sandra's Really Having A Bad Day......................
Review: Sandra's really having a Bad Day, in fact, she's having a Bad Year! Sandra's just turned 36 years old, has eye bags, and is no longer Young, Hip, and Fresh. If she feels this bad at 36, I wonder what's she going to be like if she makes it to 46 years old. Sandra's a writer trying to write that great American novel, but she's got writer's block. She also writes for a failing women's website, and has a TV sitcom based on her life that's due out soon but it looks like it's a failure already. She's neurotic, a mess and quickly becoming a non-achiever. She hopes to make "Haggard" an admired term of endearment in LA.Well, reading this book is like an adrenaline rush. Most of this book was very entertaining. There were some very funny chapters I could easily relate to. Sandra has a lot to say, and where she gets all this information & ideas from, I don't know. It's amazing! I found myself caught up with her and rushing right along with her to the end of the book. She looks at life in a crazy, and different sort of way. I think Sandra has only begun to express herself, and there's lots more to come in print from her. Let's hope so. She's funny, crazy, and a delight to spend an evening with. Recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Parochial
Review: Saying that it's parochial and esoteric and only giving four stars doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it and that I don't buy every Loh. The ideal reader, however, for whom this would be a five+++
would be a female writer who lives, or has lived, in Los Angeles, watches television, and has read Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence." Not qualifying on any of the above,I missed some of the cultural references and some brilliant satirical points were lost on me. The deficiencies are mine, not Loh's.
It does not have a plot in the usual novelistic sense, except that it describes the events of a year. Some of the essays or anecdotes, such as the account of her relationship with a WEB magazine are linked. Her relationships with her husband and sister form leitmotifs. It is a collection of self-deprecating humorous pieces of the type one reads in in syndicated newspaper columns by such people as David barry or the late Irma Bombeck.
She doesn't succeed in making Van Nuys sound all that bad. I've been there once and thought it was quite nice.
Rating:
Summary: Funny but also kinda sad
Review: This book is funny year-in-the-life look at a struggling 36 year old women writer living in Van Nuys, CA. As a former resident of LA, I found the book both funny and sad. While Sandra's life takes some humerous twists and turns, the main theme of the book is that getting old is hard (no surprise there). Aging is all the more difficult in LA-LA land where appearance is everything and substance counts for next to nothing. Really, a sad commentary on Southern California life.
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