Amy Herrick

Amy Herrick's first novel, At the Sign of the Naked Waiter, traces Sarah from thirteen into her thirties. HarperCollins issued it during 1992; its episodic structure returns to Sarah at intervals of several years. Friendship, family, parenthood, illness, and loss continually alter the expectations established in adolescence. Sarah's friend Robin and her brother Fred carry some of the story's most painful developments, yet ghosts, strange visions, comic turns, and surreal objects keep hardship from producing a uniformly solemn narrative. A Los Angeles Times review praised the characters and the wit of Herrick's prose while noting the wide range of subjects held together by Sarah's changing perspective. Penguin Books issued a 1994 edition with the fuller catalogued title At the Sign of the Naked Waiter: A Novel. The recurring leaps across time make endurance visible as a process, not a trait Sarah possesses unchanged from the beginning.