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BOOK BRIEFS
Sunday News staffers write about their latest reads:
"Lucy Crocker 2.0," by Caroline Preston (Scribner, $23).
Lucy Crocker isn't comfortable with computers. Nevertheless, she invented an intelligent computer game for her husband's software company. Now Maiden's Quest is so popular it demands a successor, but the artist and former children's librarian can't produce.
At her creative nadir, Lucy discovers a brazen young employee is about to take over both her husband and the company. Impulsively, she lights out for her childhood vacation home in the Wisconsin woods, sweeping up their nerdy 13-year-old twins boys, who recently discovered Internet porn. She deposits them at the deep-woods canoe camp she attended years ago. They might be regarded as fish out of water, except they can't swim.
While Ed anguishes alone at home, Lucy gets intimately reacquainted with the man she almost married. The twins risk their lives trying to re-enter cybercivilization, and then help Lucy produce the next best-selling computer game, based on sketches inspired by her childhood memories. When Ed finally catches up with his family, all is forgiven in the excitement of creating the latest software.
The tone is...