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Few writers, it seems, are immune to what I call the "Four Friends Formula": take four very different people (women, men, a mix), give them a shared background (often college or university, sometimes an apartment or office), throw in life's rich pageant, and stir. Voila, a cosmopolitan cocktail (sic) a la Sex and the City. (It doesn't matter at what stage in her career the author is; Rona Jaffe's most recent book, THE ROOMMATING SEASON, followed this scenario.) And why not? It offers four different characters, four different storylines, four different perspectives … and more than four ways that things can go wrong.
Jane Green, an expat Brit (who now lives Stateside with her husband and --- guess the number --- four children), struck Chick Lit gold with her novels JEMIMA J and BOOKENDS. Her publisher has now reissued her 1997 novel STRAIGHT TALKING. Anastasia, known to all as "Tasha" or "Tash," has a singularly enviable London life. She's a producer for a morning television show, owns her flat, and has a wardrobe full of understatedly elegant navy and camel glad rags. She also lets us know early on that she's "stunning" --- none of the "Does-my-bum-look-big-in-this?" Chick Lit whining for Tasha.
However, Tasha also has issues --- one might say she even has a subscription. Brought up by materially well-to-do but emotionally bad-to-worse parents, Tasha's idea of connecting with others consists of weekly gorge-and-gab fests with her three girlfriends --- Mel, Emma and Andy --- and passionfests with her man of the moment. Early on Tasha spills the story of her one stab at a successful relationship with Simon, who ditched her for a dumber blonde named Tanya.
While Simon leaves Tasha for good, his best friend Adam (also blonde and an ex-rugger) doesn't. Adam becomes Tasha's fifth girlfriend --- but he wants more, as is evident to everyone but her. Tasha meanwhile is busy fending off the male anchor's clumsy advances, tut-tutting over her girlfriend Mel's low self-image, and worrying about why she hungers for first-date flutters so much (really, first-something-else flutters).
Adam does get up the nerve to share his true feelings with Tasha, and they embark on a relationship that falters from lack of the flutters Tasha craves. Meanwhile, back at the Four Friends Ranch, Mel's long-term live-in has left and she has found new love and new hair, Emma is planning the perfect wedding, and Andy (the Samantha Jones of this group) may have found the last notch for her bedpost. While they gallop off into the conclusion, Tasha makes the biggest mistake of her life and then has an "Aha!" moment that allows her to graduate from therapy straight into a date with Adam. All's well that ends well, and all that cheers mates!
I know publishers want to capitalize on popular authors, and Jane Green's more recent writing is of the kind that gives Chick Lit a good name --- BOOKENDS, for example, was a fun and witty novel in which the gang-of-four formula was tweaked enough to make it interesting. STRAIGHT TALKING will appeal most to Greenaholics; others may want to skip directly to the author's later work.
--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick
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