Roman holiday

My latest Astral Weeks column for the L.A. Times looks at Laura Kasischke's In a Perfect World:

Kasischke employs a close third-person voice to track Jiselle, a flight attendant in her 30s, as she falls in love with and swiftly marries Mark Dorn, a widower pilot so knee-knockingly swoonworthy that disembarking female passengers often contrive to take a second look (by saying, for instance, "Did I leave a book called The Single Woman's Guide to Rome in my seat pocket by any chance?").