
Purchase
HOW PERFECT IS THAT By: Sarah Bird
Knopf
June 2008
On Sale: June 10, 2008
320 pages ISBN: 0307268284 EAN: 9780307268280 Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Fiction | Contemporary | Women's Fiction
Blythe Youngβa wannabe Texas princess, a heroine as plucky, driven, and desperate as Vanity Fairβs Becky Sharpβis plummeting precipitously from up- to downstairs, banging her head on every step of the Austin social ladder as she falls. Not unlike the country as a whole, Blythe has surrendered to a multitude of dubious moral choices and is now facing the disastrous consequences: bankruptcy, public humiliation, a teensy fondness for the pharmaceuticals, and no Pap smear for ten years. But worst of all, she is forced to move back into the fleabag co-op boardinghouse where she lived when she was a student at the University of Texas. Though Blythe cares much more about the ravaged state of her nails, and how to get the ingredients for Code Warriorβ Blytheβs proprietary blend of Stoli, Ativan, and Red Bull that keeps everything in focusβher soul is hanging in the balance. Only when she is in danger of losing the one friend whoβs been her true moral center is she ready to face her sins and make amends. And her penance is merciless: she must find a way to lure her former socialite friends into the tofu tenement she has been reduced to. Little does Blythe know that the ensuing collision between the pierced, tattooed, and dreadlocked inhabitants and the pampered, Kir-sipping socialites offers the only hope of finding a way out of her moral quagmire. Funny, fast-paced, sharp-eyed, an old-fashioned morality tale with an appropriately twenty-first-century ending, How Perfect Is That is a comic triumph of a novel.
|