THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF VIVIAN

A twentysomething woman in New York . . . sound familiar? Not surprising.

Download Macromedia Flash Player 6 and you can check out Vivian Livingston on the Web at www.vivianlives.com. Tour her cute apartment, feed her cute dog, and rummage through her cute clutter. You can even click and flush her cartoon toilet or peek at her cool clothes! Vivian’s totally cool Web site gets more than six million hits a month and bristles with marketing links. Yes, Vivian has promotional deals with car companies, beauty products, trendy stores, girl magazines, and the greatest retail shrine of all, Bloomingdale’s. At least this pretend autobiography by Vivian’s amanuensis (and shameless shill) Sherrie Krantz doesn’t require that you provide your age, sex, and home address in order to read it. But we already know so much about Vivian: she went to Penn State, ended an abusive relationship with a frat hunk, moved to New York with her BFF (Best Friend Forever) after winning a songwriting contest, has a cool job as a glorified assistant at VH1, has straight and gay friends, can’t get her life together but has a lot of fun trying. Men: studly poet Patrick is great in bed but a cheater at heart, and tall handsome John, who’s like an investment banker or an attorney or something, is all wrapped up in himself. Work keeps Vivian busy, even if arrogant boss Zack won’t give her the promotion she deserves. Still, her next assignment is a plum: an all-star auto race in California. When she’s back in New York, a new romance blossoms with Jack, an Italian-American firefighter. Tragedy is averted when Vivian’s BFF’s stupid boyfriend accidentally sets fire to her apartment, but no one is hurt and the cute dog is rescued. Life goes on!!!

Strictly for fans—mostly under18—who can’t get enough of the Web site. Warning: Gushy, girlish prose throughout, with triple exclamation points, triple question marks, and emoticons.