Pamela Ribon is not a household name, unless you live in a household that reads her Weblog, Pamie.com. Ribon's site has been around so long -- since 1998, when she was a recent college grad toiling in tech support at IBM -- that, in fact, it preceded blogs. It used to simply be an online journal.

Pamie.com charted Ribon's life-altering move from Austin to Los Angeles; the end of her first long-term relationship; her purchasing of a home; her marriage to another veteran blogger (www.plaintivewail.com); and her professional ups and downs. Ribon is so warm and candid that Pamie.com often reads like the musings of a close friend -- or yourself. This generously inclusive quality has a lot to do with why Ribon's second novel, Why Moms Are Weird, is so likable.

The writer, actor and comedian -- a contributor to the indispensable site Television Without Pity and mastermind of a successful stage show savaging Anne Heche's loony autobiography -- made her fiction debut three years ago with Why Girls Are Weird. Drawn from the experience of running a personal Web site that suddenly became hugely popular (and repurposing a lot of material previously published online), the novel transcended mere chick-lit. It was sharp, funny, astute and deeply felt.

Ribon's somewhat unfortunately titled follow-up (publishing houses, alas, do love their branding) is not a sequel, though it retains the first novel's wry and agreeably profane tone. It also showcases Ribon's solid growth as a writer. At only 31, she deserves to immediately be plucked from the chick-lit ghetto -- and then poised to knock talentless gimmicks such as Lauren Weisberger and Plum Sykes permanently off the best-seller lists.

The story gets under way when Benny's widowed mother is injured in a car accident, and Benny travels back east from her home in Los Angeles to care for her. Benny's younger sister, "who currently lives with [their] mother in a Grey Gardens way," is all but useless; her "favorite things include tattoos, cigarettes and boys who have stood in front of courtrooms pleading `Guilty.'"

Naturally, right before Benny is set to leave L.A. for an indeterminate time, she meets an awfully compelling man in the grocery store. And once she arrives at her mom's house -- which she finds in profound disarray, and packed with stray animals -- Benny strikes up a complicated friendship with a married handyman.

Why Moms Are Weird is about a lot of things -- Benny's slow process of overcoming her hard-won cynicism about relationships; her mother's late-life forays into the dating world; her difficult but intractably loving dynamic with her sister -- but Ribon keeps all her plotlines all in neat order. This joyous, single-sitting read is as bright and witty as it is wise and bittersweet. And Ribon is a sparkling talent who merits more than just cult fame.

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