There are two kinds of people in this world: those who’ve got their act together and those whose lives are in complete shambles no matter how desperately they may try to normalize it.

Let’s face it; the latter of the two characters are much more fun to read about. They’re like the train wrecks of modern novels, people just can’t help but stare.

In her unique debut novel, Kate Christensen introduces the world to yet another train wreck named Claudia Steiner. The 29-year-old once had dreams of being a hard-news journalist, but somehow has ended up working for one of the scariest women in New York — mystery novelist Genevieve del Castellano.

Although her title is “secretary,” Claudia is actually the novelist, taking Genevieve’s sparse ideas and writing life into them.

For Claudia, everyday involves crawling out of bed with a hangover, dodging her landlord and his requests for overdue rent, dashing to the job she hates, and then trying to mask her love for her best friend, William, during their nightly after-work bar run.

Further complicating her already crowded life, Claudia’s married ex-lover continually buzzes back into her life again and again, like a pesky mosquito that she just can’t bring herself to squash.

Claudia is an alcoholic, but she succeeds in denying it to herself, and no one else in her life is brave enough to mention it. Most of the time Claudia spends at the bar is to avoid her dismal apartment, “the fourth floor of a former residential hotel that had been constructed cheaply and hastily after one war or another to house a sudden influx of immigrants willing to live anywhere.”

The ever-present roaches refuse to scatter when she enters the room, and her cat Delilah lives under the bed, only emerging when Claudia is safely out the door for the day. Hell, with a life like this, who wouldn’t drink?

“In the Drink” lacks a driven plot. The author’s only goal is to survive the day along with Claudia. The heroine, if she can be called that, stumbles from one bad life experience to the next, hating her existence but refusing to do anything to change it. When the occasional bright point does enter Claudia’s existence, it is not of her own doing, but only the work of fate on an off day.

Christensen is a natural at using creative and colorful language to fill her pages, but every description details one more horrible aspect of Claudia’s ill-fitting life.

Christensen writes, “Yesterday’s promise of spring had been retracted overnight. Ice rimmed each spear of long grass around the pond … the icy wind penetrated the porous tissue of my bones and froze my legs to numb logs. The low rays of the morning sun knifed through the naked trees and blinded me.” Imagery like this could keep a person up at night.

“In the Drink” proves that Christensen shows great promise as a writer, but she’ll need to write a more likable character that her audience won’t feel obliged to pity. Or she could just hire a pathetic secretary to write everything for her. Didn’t someone write a book about that once?

2 Stars

Rating based on a 5 Star scale.