On Mermaid Avenue - Softcover

Two young women meet in college, pal around in N.Y.C, and sleep with a lot of guys--in this very slight, fey, sentimental imitation of Tama Janowitz and/or Anita Loos: a first adult novel by the author of Short Subject (a 1989 YA book) and the story collection Married Life and Other True Adventures (1990). Edie's the crazy girl and Mona's the sensible one when they first meet after a Humanities lecture their senior year. On first contact Mona is very impressed with Edie's plaid skirt, spiked heels, and motorcycle jacket, and when Edie redubs her ``Monarose...a flower of a name,'' the two become inseparable friends. Donning black velvet and thrift-shop silk, lightheartedly bedding mysterious boys who might someday conceivably become diplomats and older men who (God forbid) could decide at any moment to leave their wives, Edie and Monarose cruise through their final days of college with the sole intent of stomping on and crushing the heavy mantle of Edie's unpleasantly fragmented and Monarose's stultifyingly proper origins. After college, with no goals or ambitions to speak of, the two move erratically in and out of seedy Manhattan apartments and seedier love affairs, creating a satisfying pattern in which Edie causes more and more trouble (flying off to Vienna at a moment's notice on her parents' credit card; bugging the apartment of a former lover), so that Monarose must abandon jobs, lovers, and other friends to rescue her. Monarose doesn't mind: she'd do anything to keep flighty Edie brightening up her life. In the end, though, not surprisingly, it's Edie who latches onto a pompous young businessman, forces him to propose, and defiantly marries him in a lavish, drunken wedding, while Monarose is left to dream alone. Frivolous fiction, East Village-style. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This rollicking first novel, which follows best friends Monarose and Edie from Manhattan undergraduate classes through their post-college search for men and happiness, offers the kind of hilarious, often poignant life knowledge that should be required for Mensa membership. Kirshenbaum, author of the story collection Married Life and Other Adventures , opens and closes this longer fiction with weddings, even though narrator Monarose observes, "If this is supposed to be the biggest day in a girl's life, it doesn't leave much to look forward to." Edie introduces her previously docile friend to the outre --kohl eye makeup procured during a trip to Egypt, a homemade bugging device to spy on a former boyfriend--and since her hyperkinetic imagination can transform the least promising wimp into an exotic male to die for, a parade of questionable suitors enter and exit their lives. Tension builds in the friendship when one of the women becomes serious about a man the other detests, challenging Edie's ideal scenario: "We could be like the Flintstones and the Rubbles, best friends who go bowling together." Mermaid Avenue is home to Coney Island's Cyclone roller coaster; this comic novel likewise presents the highs and lows of life's gritty truths for two dizzy dames. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.