Synopsis
In the midst of a "caring" divorce, North America's first known yuppies Dirk and Bree have become celebrities after an appearance on national TV, and Bree's former lover, screenwriter Neil Blender, has stepped in to appropriate their story for a new movie
Reviews
San Francisco lifestyle-writer Laura Gloriana is frantic. The quintessential yuppie couple whose marriage she has chronicled for the past seven years is talking divorce just as Laura hopes to close the film deal for Perfect Love, The Story of Dirk and Bree. Trying to understand what went wrong, Laura goes back through her clips and re-reads her Lifestyle: A Magazine columns about Dirk's drug addiction, the birth of the couple's daughter Rachel (which Laura turned into the book Dirk and Bree and Baby Makes Three ) and Bree's success as a lawyer. Meanwhile Laura has problems of her own: her surgeon lover begins to fall for someone else; her father dies; the 1990 Bay Area earthquake occurs. Suddenly normal life has shifted, and Laura must realign herself with the changes. Syndicated columnist Kahn's satirical humor, while sharp and enjoyable in small doses, in bulk collapses under its own weight.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
California narcissism--San Francisco Bay area division--is cheerfully satirized by Kahn (Luncheon at the Cafe Ridiculous, 1990), who also uses her echt yuppie title characters, Dirk and Bree, in a real-life syndicated newspaper column. Kahn tries a little too hard in the beginning to poke fun at her overfamiliar targets, but then her narrator, journalist and would-be screenwriter Laura Gloriana, begins to resemble a human being and the novel takes off on its wayward course. Gloriana, once Laura Gurvitz of Brooklyn and Teaneck, New Jersey, intends to get a movie deal out of Dirk and Bree, whom she considers her property because it was her articles about them that made them the last word in yuppiehood. But all deals are off when the two announce on a TV talk show their plans to have ``caring divorce''--not so caring, however, that one of them doesn't end up with a broken nose before the show is over. Gloriana believes she must get them back together again to advance her career, and she tries, but she's no Machiavelli. That tag rightfully belongs to her rival for the Dirk- Bree property, Neil Blender, a ruthless Hollywood go-getter with a laid-back demeanor who is one of Kahn's most successful satiric characters. Kahn also has her fun with Blender's politically correct ex-wife, Mai. As Gloriana pursues her quest, she has a chance to realize what's really important, nudged on by the death of her father and an earthquake. The finest comic moments come near the end, when a weekend couples' encounter seminar led by a rabbi into Zen Judaism gets out of hand. A knowing, often funny romp among northern California navel- gazers. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
