1/03

Selena Keller has recently completed her dissertation in Orient Studies, but the thought of teaching at a mid-American university is less than unappealing to her. An attractive and intelligent woman, Selena is wise about worldly events, but naïve when it comes to matters of her personal life. She happens upon a job ad for the CIA, submits her application and, even to her surprise, is accepted. Somehow even the CIA was unable to uncover Selena’s pot-smoking days as a student of Sanskrit or how she manipulated her way through the lie detector test. Selena goes through the typical "growing pains" of any neophyte spy - understanding proper "spy etiquette," finding friends and losing lovers. Being a true New Yorker, one of her most difficult challenges is learning to drive. While healing from bruises of the heart and of the flesh, she encounters Stan, an overweight, nondescript spy trainee who seems to know just what to say and do to catch Selena’s attention.

While Selena is studying the science of spy manipulation tactics, Stan is positioning himself as the man Selena thinks she may need in her life. He loses weight, smokes cigarettes and unlike anyone else in their training class, is completely unafraid to ride in the car with Selena as she learns to drive. Unlike Selena, Stan is extremely serious about his career with the CIA. He reveals to Selena his destiny to become the President of the United States. He joined the CIA as a way of reinvigorating national pride in his fellow countrymen. "Once upon a time," he began speaking quickly, his voice rising, "to be an American meant something to people. But there’s a malaise in this country." Stan also later reveals to Selena that he is not the person she thinks he is. He knows things she would not begin to suspect or understand. Stan conspired to have their rooms close together in the dormitory; he smoked because she did. As he slowly begins to reveal his "true" identity, Selena has doubts about who Stan is and why he is in her life.

Selena is assigned the name Caesaria A. Hester and is told to inform her friends and family members that she is now working for the USDA as a budget analyst. Soon after training begins, Selena the Spy shares a bit too much information with her family about her new occupation. When Selena is questioned for having had contact with unauthorized persons which is a serious impropriety, things with Stan begin to unravel. The once oh-so-attentive and complimentary Stan becomes the berating and scolding Stan, whose adherence to a rigid standard of excellence is unbreakable, even for Selena.

Berlinski’s Loose Lips is somewhat predictable, but intriguing nonetheless. Selena’s acerbic sense of humor, quick wit, determination and her naivety make for an interesting spy profile. Here she describes one of her trainee classmates:

Nan, …who had always seemed perfectly pleasant to me before, if in no way especially interesting became the hair shirt of my short paramilitary life. …Nan’s voice registered a single note, an adenoidal whine elongated with the diphthongs of the middle west. She had a mye—graine. She thought someone wasn’t pulling his wei-ei-ght.

Selena’s keen sense of reading others does not seem help her figure out Stan’s ulterior motives until it is too late. Even her friend Iris, who was unceremoniously kicked out of the CIA training class, is suspicious of Stan’s motives before Selena expresses doubt.

As the novel comes to an end, what motivated Selena to pursue a career with the CIA remains a mystery to the reader. Stan’s involvement in her demise with the CIA remains a mystery to Selena. The story concludes with Selena doing research in India and hanging out with a young South African backpacker. Loose Lips is easy reading for an evening or two with a cup of chai and a favorite comforter; inviting you as the reader to vicariously live the life of a secret agent.