Monday, July 28, 2008

Here's another review for you while I run out and buy that Starbucks gift card

Bergdorf Blondes: A Novel Bergdorf Blondes: A Novel by Plum Sykes

This book came in the mail today and I don't know why. Did I order it from half.com? Or one of Amazon.com's used book sellers? Did I win it in a Bloggy Giveaway? Is it a present? I have no idea.

However, I checked it for drugs, and it came out clean. No suspicious white powder. So I figured what the hell, I'll read it.

However. I'm only a couple of pages into it, and something about the rich, vapid women in "good buildings" on Park Avenue seems eerily familiar. Which leaves me wondering: has Chick-lit become so generic that it's become one big French-manicured blur--or have I actually read this book?

Only time will tell.

++++UPDATED++++

I'm very sorry to say this, because it means either Plum Sykes is a lousy writer or I have early-onset Alzheimer's, but I'm several chapters in, and I still can't tell whether I've read this before. Some parts of it seem familiar, like the passages about Brazilians.

But then, hasn't every single book about rich women in New York wasted gallons of ink obsessing about pubic hair? The only thing worse than the J. Sisters material in Bergdorf Blondes is a passage from a different book whose name I can't recall. Thankfully, it took place in London.

I say thankfully because in this book, the aging female protagonist decided, upon taking a new lover, that her nether 'do needed some touching up, so she got busy with a bottle of auburn hair dye and a toothbrush, and then finished things off with a spritz of some kind of hair sheen product that contained tiny bits of gold glitter--only to discover that it all rubbed off all over Mr. Wonderful's face.

And now, if you're mesmerized by a mental picture of a man walking around with the bottom half of his face stained a strange shade of orange-brown and twinkling with wee bits of fairy gold--in broad daylight, mind you--you'll know why I don't read more chick-lit than I do.

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