Wedding Bell Blues
For once, a smart book that’s funBy Amy Rogers
Once upon a time there was a beautiful young maiden who lived in a kingdom called New York, where she waited for a handsome prince to marry her so they could live happily ever after. That’s how fairy tales begin, and Me Times Three is just that — a modern-day fairy tale set in the boomtown New York of the 1980s. It’s the story of fashion-magazine editor Sandra Berlin, engaged to football hunk Bucky Ross, an all-American guy who comes complete with a blue-blood pedigree and a promising ad agency career. Despite their differences — she’s Jewish, he’s stereotypically WASPish — the bride-to-be has it all planned: She’ll work at Jolie! magazine until the wedding, move to the suburbs, have babies and write children’s books.
“So, it wasn’t exactly original,” she confesses. “Even though I wanted it to be true. This is the story of what happened instead.”
Her first hint that something is wrong ought to hit her on page 26, when Bucky goes on a “business” sailing trip to the Caribbean. But Sandy is so in love with her high-school sweetheart that she ignores the warning signs.
Seven pages later there’s no denying she’s been duped when a tall, buxom blonde named Carla announces at a party that she, too, is engaged to Bucky. So is a bland woman named Beth. Forget two-timing: Bucky has a trio of women in separate corners of the city, all planning their weddings.
Paul, a gay, drama school pal who adores Sandy, consoles her, goes shopping with her, and gets drunk with her.
“Yes, I was bitter, and it was a dark, ugly emotion with a taste all its own, one that even Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch could not obliterate,” Sandy explains. “I tasted it all the time.”
Worse, her career seems to have stalled; she’s surrounded by excruciatingly stylish co-workers and maddeningly difficult editors.
For all her righteous indignation, Sandy never degenerates into a creature of revenge or self-destruction. She’s the sort of character you’d call “spunky” as she picks up the pieces and puts her life back together. She begins to date again, “believing that the ritual would heal me eventually, like antibiotics.” But will she ever find Prince Charming, the one man who can bestow “the kiss that disconnects you from the world, where you drop and soar and somehow land in just the right place”?
Finding the answer will have to wait when Paul becomes gravely ill. In some of the book’s most poignant scenes, Sandy puts aside her self-absorption to connect more closely with her lifelong friend. That’s when she learns that love and lies can indeed co-exist within our most meaningful relationships.
Sprinkled throughout the book are quirky fables, idealistic little make-believe stories meant to be part of the children’s storybook that Sandy dreams of publishing. She adds contemporary touches: Princesses reject glass slippers in favor of peau de soie pumps, and suburbs have sprung up around the Emerald City. Even the ubiquitous frog-that-turns-into-a-prince-once-he’s-kissed has been updated; he’s now a shoe-shopping matchmaker.
Once Sandy finally does encounter a potential Mr. Right, Witchel throws the expected obstacles in their path, including one that makes particularly creative use of a bottle of sickly pink Pepto-Bismol. It’s not surprising to feel the story move in the direction of a happy ending: So what if Sandy also finds her dream job along the way? Isn’t the hope that every young woman might do the same part of what gets us out of bed in the morning?
Readers who are tired of finding cynicism between their book covers will likely enjoy this smoothly paced story. Author Witchel is a style reporter for the New York Times, and it shows in her knowledge of fashion and art — and the convoluted behavior of the trend-setters and trend-followers whose lives revolve around both those worlds. This is her first novel, although her 1997 memoir, Girls Only, caught critics’ attention for the book’s breezy, affectionate portraits of the author’s family. Witchel’s fictional protagonist draws her voice from a similar place, where self-deprecating humor helps to animate a likable heroine.
There’s nothing shrill or self-important about Me Times Three. In a refreshing counterpoint to current trends in fiction, this book is fun. Given the serious state of current affairs, some readers will probably wonder if such a book is ill-timed or irrelevant. But in the same way that Sex and the City transports TV viewers to a fantasy world full of beautiful people and their romantic escapades, this is a welcome escape from reality.
If you’re determined to catch up on your “serious” reading this season, wait until summer vacation to dip into Me Times Three. Like a big plate full of gooey chocolate brownies, it’s a guilty pleasure — no matter how much you tell yourself to stop, you know you’ll keep devouring it until it’s all gone.
CL Recommends
Following are some recent books we recommend.
The Key To My Neighbor’s House by Elizabeth Neuffer. Boston Globe reporter Neuffer is a tremendous journalist and writer who found herself covering the ravaged countries of Rwanda and Bosnia. She tells of her experiences and, more importantly, those of people who search for simple justice in a far too complex web of laws, deceit and uncaring governments. Part personal journey and part document of growing international support for war tribunals, Neuffer’s book would win multiple awards — in a just world.
Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen. A bit less goofiness than usual from Hiaasen, and a more straightforward murder mystery that takes aim at the sorry state of newspapers, and vicious stupidity in the rock & roll business. The suspicious death of a former rock star leads a reporter who’s been busted down to obit writer to plunge into the surreal, sleazy world of dimwitted musicians. Make no mistake, this is still laugh-out-loud funny, but Hiaasen’s focus is tighter than in recent books.
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. The writer who, in the award-winning Cod, took a simple subject and turned it into a fascinating natural history of the last 500 years, does it again. This time his subject is salt, the substance which, the author avows, has “shaped civilization.” If this sounds dry as dust, rest assured that Kurlansky is highly readable, even a lot of fun, as he again shows how one tiny part of a culture can be a prism, an entry into a larger picture of human history.
Just Like Beauty by Lisa Lerner. Just a few years in the future, 14-year-old Edie Stein is scheduled to compete in the annual Feminine Woman of Conscience Pageant. The contest determines each girl’s knowledge of chemical stimulants, and they’re expected to kill a rabbit and sew it into a muff, as well as simulate sex with the Electric Polyrubber Man. And that doesn’t even cover the town’s invasion by giant, chemically stoked grasshoppers the size of cats, or the popular suicide cult called Happy Endings. Disturbing but hilarious, and ultimately, oddly believable.
Captain Saturday by Robert Inman. Inman proves himself a born writer in this story of a popular TV weatherman whose sudden shitstorm of problems lures him back to his own past for answers and strength to deal with life’s upheavals. Sturdy and graceful writing mark this book, which is another step onward and upward in Inman’s post-TV career.
— Ann Wicker, John Grooms, and David Childers
Notable New Paperbacks
Shutterbabe: Adventures In Love and War by Deborah Copaken Kogan. An exciting memoir of a bold photographer who between 1998 and 1992 worked in some of the world’s most dangerous places: the war in Afghanistan, rhino poaching in Zimbabwe, Romanian orphanages, the drug biz in Amsterdam. She also found lovers, some of whom weren’t creeps. Honest, eloquent and funny, Kogan tells her harrowing tale with style and grit.
Elizabeth by David Starkey. A lively popular history of the young years of Elizabeth I and her rise to the throne of England. Starkey takes a subject that has been beaten into dull submission by too many scholars and creates a compelling, very readable human story of a budding political genius.
The Ruined Map by Kobe Abe. A modern masterpiece, The Ruined Map is a startling surrealistic mystery about a detective hired to find a man who disappeared several months earlier. Reason and logic fall away, the mystery deepens, and the detective’s very identity comes into question. A suspenseful tale that ultimately moves beyond being a mystery novel and dives into the mystique and oddity of human imagination.
Martyr’s Crossing by Amy Wilentz. This tense, well-crafted novel takes place in Israel, where a tragic, unintended incident at a highway checkpoint leads to a moving, unsentimental look at the lives of a Palestinian-American mother and an Israeli soldier.
Two O’Clock Eastern Wartime by John Dunning. A period piece and mystery that takes place in and around a World War II era radio station. The mystery is complex and compelling, but the real strength of the book is Dunning’s depiction of the power and potential beauty (now squandered) of the medium of radio.
— John Grooms
Creative Loafing’sCharlotte Bestseller List
Compiled by Ann WickerHardbacks
1. Under Fire by W.E.B. Griffin
2. Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News by Bernard Goldberg
3. Captain Saturday by Robert Inman
4. Journey Through Heartsongs by Mattie J.T. Stepanek
5. Tie: Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling &
Self Matters by Phillip C. McGraw
Paperbacks
1. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar
2. A Painted House by John Grisham
3. Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden
4. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. The Blessing of a Skinned Knee by Wendy Mogel
Participating bookstores: Barnes & Noble-Pineville; Borders Books & Music; Little Professor-Park Road; Newsstand International; Waldenbooks-Eastland Mall.
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2002.
