The Local News--Miriam Gershow

From magazine articles to fellow book bloggers, I'd heard a lot about this one. It seemed an interesting premise; Lydia Pasternak is left to deal with the loss of her older brother, Danny, after he mysteriously disappears. Everyone in the community bands together in an effort to bring Danny home and Lydia, along with her family, is thrust into a celebrity-like status. Described as a "deeply moving story about the complicated bond between a brother and sister," you would expect an endearing tear-jerker, right? Yeah, not so much.
Lydia feeds off of others' sympathy in the wake of Danny's disappearance--she actually wants people to feel sorry for her. She uses her new distorted celebrity to gain a higher social status at school and finds herself spending time with Danny's friends.
Her parents hire Denis Jimenez, a private investigator, in hopes that he would be able to track down their son. While Denis asks Lydia for help, she goes overboard trying to impress him. She is trying so hard to get his attention that she seems to forget the goal: to find Danny.
As more time passes with no leads on Danny's whereabouts, Lydia becomes more content with the notion of being the only child in her family--and finally out of Danny's shadow. Even if I could wrap my mind around the idea of someone relishing the loss of their sibling, reading of Lydia's relationship with her brother didn't seem to warrant such behavior. Though they didn't always get along, she reminisces about the fun times they shared growing up together. It's frustrating; she didn't appear to hate Danny, so why was she so relieved when he left? Lydia's back and forth, ambivalent feelings for her brother is tiring and leaves you feeling confused. Even when it is revealed that Danny has been killed, (trust, I'm not ruining anything--there's no anticipation surrounding this issue) Lydia can't get it through her head--he's really gone. There's just no pleasing this girl; her brother was out of the picture, so she was free to take the spotlight, but he would never be coming back--whatever that meant to her.
The end of the book cuts to her ten years in the future, and she is discontent as ever. If something was going well, she would want to bring pain to it--literally. She was having a nice conversation with her mother and boyfriend, and felt the urge to kick each of them in the shin.
I am baffled by the fact that this story is described as funny in some of the reviews that I read; whoever finds this story amusing in any way has an interesting (read:strange) sense of humor. Maybe Lydia's ambivalence and selfishness is meant to come off as humorous, but I found it to be completely un-relatable and desperate.
Aside from the slow-moving storyline, Lydia's character will irritate you to no end. If I haven't made it clear enough: DON'T BOTHER.