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.
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2002.
