CHLOE DOES YALE

Yale University sex columnist pens first novel about a Yale University sex columnist.

Krinsky is a celebrity of sorts, having written a column in the Yale Daily News called “Sex and the Elm City” that’s renowned in some quarters for its supposed sauciness. For fiction, she didn’t look terribly far for inspiration but comes up with the story of one Chloe Carrington, who writes a column for the Yale Daily News called “Sex and the Elm City.” At least some of those columns appear to be original Krinsky ones, strung together with the faintest of fictional bridges that drearily follow the less than madcap misadventures of Chloe as she negotiates the pitfalls of being a student at Yale. It’s not so much a novel as a collection of unimaginative collegiate anecdotes that strive to marry a wannabe naughty attitude with stock chick-lit embarrassments and misunderstandings. Chloe goes to a party in a bikini and has a bad hookup with a guy afterward! Chloe really, really tries to read her homework, but Faulkner is hard! Chloe and her friends take an RV down to Harvard and drink lots of beer! Chloe obsesses over calories and gets jealous of her super-skinny and super-smart best friend! And who’s that guy leaving cryptic missives for Chloe on the paper’s message board?! Lurching tipsily from one unfunny episode to the next, Krinsky’s narrative strives to make her Chloe into a Carrie Bradshaw for the privileged college elite, dispensing sarcasm and hard-earned wisdom in equal amounts to her doting coterie of buddies—and the readers of her column—but it scarcely musters up a chuckle.

It’s, well, like being back in college again, the year you had a roommate you hated and most of your friends were annoying twits.