When Penelope Schleeman, a 33-year-old English teacher, published her debut novel, a feminist eco-thriller entitled American Mermaid, the last thing she expected was for it to become a viral sensation thanks to a popular Instagram influencer. Suddenly, her book is everywhere, and before long, Hollywood comes calling. Thus begins Penelope's odyssey into the tumultuous world of screenwriting, where she's paired with two young male screenwriters, Murphy and Randy, to adapt her novel for the big screen. Penelope relocates to Los Angeles, where she attends glamorous parties with her agent, Danielle, and watches her bank account balance grow to numbers she never even dreamed of while teaching in Connecticut. And yet, as she witnesses her mermaid heroine Sylvia transformed from an introspective twentysomething student of science grappling with her asexuality to a bold, sexy teen action-hero destined to make the ultimate sacrifice, Penelope starts to fear that she's losing sight of the soul of her story and, perhaps, herself as well. Filled with wit and more than few laugh-out-loud moments, Langbein's tale alternates between Penelope's own adventures and chapters from her novel, making for a downright delightful debut novel.

A writer sells her book to Hollywood and discovers--surprise!--that she is no longer in charge. Penny Schleeman loves her job teaching English at a public high school in New Haven, but at 33 she's living in a studio apartment and has to get help from her parents if she needs dental work. "It's not my fault that it's not feasible to have a middle-class job anymore," she tells us. "All I want is to be a teacher." When her novel about Sylvia, a young woman who transforms into a mermaid, becomes a surprise bestseller, it seems Penny's money troubles are over. Her new, barracudalike film agent gets her a deal adapting her own book ("the way I make the most cash"), and she quits her job. The catch--and of course there is one--is that Penny has been teamed with two veteran screenwriters who immediately begin to advocate changes that turn Penny's powerful asexual protagonist, who defeats an evil environmental despoiler, into a love-starved teenager who dies in the end. Penny's account of her increasingly unhappy stint in Hollywood alternates with chapters from American Mermaid that make palpable how her novel is being travestied (and how some of Sylvia's conflicts mirror those of her creator). Langbein, a longtime sketch and stand-up comedian, wrings some predictable laughs from the co-writers' cringingly awful suggestions, but this is familiar stuff; Penny's wistful recollections of how much she loved teaching are fresher and ring truer. It takes too long for the pace, and readers' interest, to pick up as some mysterious edits to the master script convince Penny that Sylvia has swum out of her novel to wreak revenge on her enemies. The ambiguous two-part ending teasingly hints that this is possible, and Langbein gives the appealing Penny a shot at happiness on her own terms to wrap up this sharply well-written, but only fitfully engaging tale. An interesting debut that has more on its mind than this first-time novelist can successfully embody in fiction. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Langbein's amusing if overstuffed debut novel (after the art book Laugh Lines) splices together the stories of a mermaid confined to land and a novelist trying to make it in Hollywood. Penelope Schleeman moves from Connecticut to L.A. to cowrite the screenplay for her novel, also called American Mermaid, a job she shares with two boorish pros who discard most of what makes the novel matter to her. She attends one drunken party after another, shooting rats at one and nearly drowning at another, while dispensing mordant one-liners about Tinsel Town (interns are "mechanically breezy"; her Century City high-rise is a "fifty-shelved glass coffin"). Her story is interlaced with long chapters from her novel, a feminist thriller in which asexual mermaid Sylvia Granger uses a wheelchair after her tail has been split into two so her adoptive parents can conceal her identity. At 24, Sylvia tries to end her life by launching herself into the sea, but instead of dying, she discovers her mermaid powers, and proceeds to take revenge on her father. Though Sylvia's story mirrors that of Penny, who also holds a grudge against her wealthy father, the links between Hollywood satire and earnest sci-fi tale are generally weak. Still, the voice-driven narration makes Penelope a companionable protagonist. Though it doesn't all hang together, it has its charms. Agent: Sarah Bedingfield, Levine Greenberg. (Mar.)