Naomi Neale I Went to Vassar for This?

I Went to Vassar for This?

Naomi Neale.

Making It, Jun 2006, $6.99

ISBN 0505526867

In New York City Cathy Vorhees thought she was on the fast track to the executive suite, but instead lost the Retro Freezer account and was fired. Stunned and despondent she goes home with a Retro freezer Classic TV dinner that she tosses into her microwave. However, her day in hell is topped when her microwave fails, emitting a strange light.

When she awakens from the microwave disaster, Cathy finds herself in 1959 living as prim and proper office dictator Cathy Voight. Before she suffers a heart attack or is murdered by one of her frightened employees, Cathy tries to mellow out though pork, sugar and office sexual harassment makes her wonder where the happy days are. Still she expects to wake up from this nightmare and never eat a Retro Freezer dinner again even as her roommates Tilly and Miranda persuade her that they are real and her confusion was caused by an electric shock. Still she confides much in hunky Hank, her landlord, and seeks her way back to the future.

Mindful of Peggy Sue Got Married; I WENT TO VASSAR FOR THIS? is a wonderful time travel chick lit tale starring a heroine who uses sarcasm to hide her fear and to disguise her disgust with conditions at the end of the Eisenhower years. Cathy is a fabulous protagonist unable to cope with the suppressive submissive role of women, seeing fur coats on people walking Manhattan streets, and the lack of non sugared products. To her twenty-first century eyes, 1959 Manhattan is a backwater pig leading her to desperately find a way and Back to the Future.

Harriet Klausner