A dull and disjointed second effort from the self-described “Lit Chick.”
New York attorney concocts a strange theory to explain her dating slump.
Harmel (How to Sleep with a Movie Star, 2006) dredges up stock characters and well-tested plotlines in her second novel. Once again, an unmarried, successful, 30-year-old New Yorker struggles to find a man worthy of her time. Harper Roberts is an Ohio native who lands in New York to pursue her dream of becoming a patent lawyer. Apparently, Harper’s intellect is so razor-sharp that she leapfrogs her peers and becomes partner years ahead of schedule. Making partner at her firm kicks off the beginning of Harper’s dating dry spell; her live-in boyfriend moves out when he finds out Harper is out-earning him. Years pass, and somehow Harper manages to continually alienate the men she dates. In the midst of this romantic drought, she turns to her childhood friends Meg, Emmie and Jill (all fellow Ohio transplants) for help. Over cocktails, the girls decide to test out Harper’s theory: Men are threatened by successful women. Harper makes a pact to act and dress like a ditzy blonde cheerleader for a two-week period to see if her luck with men improves. According to the blonde theory, Harper should find more men to date if she downplays her achievements. While she does succeed in filling her calendar, all of the guys the “dumb” Harper attracts are egomaniacs looking for casual sex. In short, the theory is a flop; Harper continues to be alone and relatively miserable, and Harmel’s point in all this nonsense is lost. At least the female friendships come across as believable, as jealousy lurks beneath the surface when the marrieds and non-marrieds compare lives.
A dull and disjointed second effort from the self-described “Lit Chick.”Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2007
ISBN: 0-446-69759-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: 5 Spot/Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
An effective, uniformly controlled collection of ten stories from the author of, most recently, Cat's Eye (1989). Gathered here are pieces previously appearing in top short- story forums—The New Yorker, Granta, Saturday Night, Playboy—providing an excellent sampling of high-proof Atwood. Virtually all the pieces focus on the lives of women equivocally connected to the men around them. In "Wilderness Tips," a middle-aged woman is bluntly confronted with her husband's infidelity. "Hairball," the most disturbing here, involves the dissolution of a woman's affair with a married man; the otherwise naturalistic posture of the story is powerfully undercut by the presence of a removed tumor that the young lady keeps in a jar, eventually sending it, neatly wrapped, to her lover's wife. In "True Trash," a young woman encounters a youth who is still unaware that he had impregnated a camp employee many years earlier. And "Hack Wednesday" revolves around a disgruntled journalist brought, whimsically, to the brink of an affair before she backs off—not from any pangs of conscience but out of lethargic concern for the work involved in carrying it off. Like Alice Munro, Atwood has a talent for serving up the nuances of bourgeois Ontario culture, but with Atwood the ingredients are boiled down into a stronger and much more acerbic brew. The author's trademark smirk behind the economical prose can be wearying over the course of an entire collection, but taken separately, the pieces here are solid evidence of the author in full form. Pure Atwood.
Pub Date: Dec. 3, 1991
ISBN: 1841957984
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
The author of popular theatrical hits, Autumn Crocus, etc., has produced a first novel, a gentle, genteel story of English eccentrics, kindly Americans, and an artless, unworldly background that has no current feel. The story is told in diary form by Cassandra, middle child of novelist Mortmain. At the moment, the family is stale-mated—the father refusing to write, the stepmother able to pose only once in a while, Rose, beautiful and despairing of meeting anyone eligible to marry, even their friend, the librarian, can offer no solution. Rose wishes on a devil—and two Americans, Simon and Neil, appear, lost en route to the property Simon has inherited. They are fascinated by the whole unlikely thing—the old castle, the girls, the identity of Mortmain, whose one great novel Simon knew. Both girls determine that Simon shall be Rose's—and almost too late, with Rose in London shopping for her wedding, Cassandra realizes that it is Simon she loves, while Rose loves Neil. There's charm here—there's a gay, English spotting of humor that makes the romance and the slight story almost a natural for the Thirkell followers—for enthusiasts of the Jane Austen tradition. Literary Guild selection for November will give it the necessary impetus. And the crying need for clean and pleasant romance will find a measure of answer here.
Pub Date: Oct. 20, 1948
ISBN: 978-0-312-31616-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1948
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