Angie, I Says (SIGNED Plua SIGNED LETTERS)

Tina Sciacciapensieri, a Brooklyn working girl, struggles choosing between Vinnie, the plumber, and Noah, a sophisticated lawyer who offers her a chance to enter the more glamorous world of her dreams

"You always gotta be different," Vinnie the plumber tells his girlfriend, Tina Scacciapensieri, the half-Italian, half-Jewish, wholly working-class narrator of this appealing first novel. Vinnie's not so wrong. Tina isn't like the other secretaries at the office where she types and gossips with her friend Angie. When she discovers she's pregnant, Tina reluctantly agrees to marry her Brooklyn boyfriend, then proceeds to fall in love with a sophisticated Manhattan lawyer. Tina's story runs the course of her unplanned pregnancy, during which time she makes some important choices about what she wants from life. Speaking through this humorous and insightful woman, Wing illuminates the family dynamic as well as the emotions that bind people to their friends, lovers and co-workers. It's regrettable that class distinctions--firmly drawn in the opening chapters--fall by the wayside as the plot builds, but the unexpected, powerful conclusion and Tina's unusual brio more than compensate. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Some first novels are so indebted to their influences that they cannot help but read like tributes to the Master, and here's a case in point: this first-person narrative about a mother-to-be dealing with an unexpected pregnancy is school of J.D. Salinger, all the way. The dirty mouth, the anxious bravado--it's something of a shock to discover that this narrator is no runaway teenager but a sexually experienced, 30-year-old woman with a steady job. Tina Scacciapensieri works as a secretary at a computer trade magazine in Manhattan; her best friend is her co-worker Angie, an older woman, pitifully loyal to a husband who beats her up. Tina's Italian father divorced her Jewish mother when she went crazy (officially). Tina also has a boyfriend, Vinnie Dopodomani, a self- employed plumber making good money; Vinnie is a sweet-natured guy, madly in love with Tina, and thrilled when she tells him she's pregnant. Problem is, Tina wants the baby but doesn't want to marry Vinnie, who's a bit of a sap; Tina is part liberated woman, part plain confused (``I feel I'm in some kind of fucked-up kid's game''). A chance meeting with an upscale lawyer, Noah Lieb, adds to her confusion; Tina is ready to flip over Noah but can't decide whether he's a flake (nor, apparently, can the author). Eventually, Tina gives Vinnie the heave-ho but goes ahead with the pregnancy; her son is born with a deformed arm. We leave Tina in conflict, loving baby, hating its deformity. Wing's strength is her observation of the tooth-and-claw infighting of family life; clearly she has talent, but it badly needs room to breathe. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.