The Bowl Is Already Broken By Mary Kay Zuravleff Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 432 pp., $25 Buy this book more books most popular most commented Personal Days by Elizabeth Hand The Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York by Tom Robbins Welcome to New York Comic Con by Carol Cooper A Voice Poetry Roundup by Alan Gilbert Etgar Keret's Short-Story Overload by Michelle Orange Girls Love Gay Male Porn Pucker Up by Tristan Taormino My Boyfriend's Kink Is Getting Fat. What Do I Do? Savage Love by Dan Savage Sex and the City Spoilers: A Sneak Preview of What Really Happens to Carrie and the Girls by Lynn Yaeger Our Favorite Writers Pick Their Favorite Obscure Books Summer Guide by ALEXANDER NAZARYAN The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo by Maria Luisa Tucker NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit (9) Sean Gardiner Devo-Inspired Art in East Williamsburg (8) Maro The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo (5) Maria Luisa Tucker David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' (4) David Mamet Runnin' Scared: Deep South of Houston: Is a Soul-Food Restaurant Too Black for Soho? (4) Runnin' Scared: Chloe A. Hilliard

An accomplished entertainer, Zuravleff understands that it doesn't really matter to us whether a public appearance by the Dalai Lama will save the institution; we're here for the "Hello Dalai" jokes. In other words, the ability to maintain the off-kilter rhythm of her plots counts less than being able to distract the reader with a steady stream of witticisms and ruminations. Make that "Rumi-nations," as in the 13th-century Persian poet whose ecstatic verse Promise ingeniously applies to dilemmas everyday and extraordinary. Promise's engagement with her specialty is too deep to be a stunt, and her knack for making connections between, for example, a Rumi manuscript and a cupcake recipe should send readers to the library looking for poetry—which isn't a bad trick at all.