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Summary
Summary
Twenty-six-year-old Rosalie Preston works by day as an advice columnist for the romantically perplexed readership of Girl Talk magazine. But her true passion is for the stage and for her fledgling theater troupe, the First Borns, a tight pack of friends and lovers who live (mostly) in the East Village. When Rosalie comes to the notice of suave Berglan Starker, a theater underwriter--and also the father of her best friend--she finds herself caught up in a very different affair from those she so jauntily untangles in her column for teens. Struggling to be savvy but sage, she is swept along by curiosity, a taste for adventure, and a penchant for those alluring complimentary toiletries in New York's ritziest hotels. Fame versus art, sex versus love, ambition versus friendship, room service versus restaurants: these are the choppy waters the First Borners must navigate--together and, perhaps ultimately, apart--in this delicious novel.
"The best of what the chick-lit genre has to offer: it's wry, compelling, and keenly observed."--Library Journal "What a delightful surprise....[Delbanco's] voice is fresh and wise....The angst here is warm and funny and has the true tone of excited urgency and humility that fuels youth."--Mary Ambrose, Boston Globe "Absurdly entertaining....The wistful and wise-cracking Rosalie is a winning screwball heroine."--Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Author Notes
Francesca Delbanco received her MFA from the University of Michigan, where she later taught. She now lives in Los Angeles. This is her first novel.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ambition and romance collide in Delbanco's uneven debut about an aspiring actress who comes to New York to discover what and whom she really, really wants and how to live with the choices she makes. Rosalie Preston works by day as a GirlTalk columnist doling out sensible advice to lovelorn teens, signing her replies with the arch, "Trust me. I've lived through it." She's still on the learning curve, though, as she struggles to know her own heart. Is it in the acting she does with the First Borns, a small, tight-knit troupe formed while the members were still in college? Or will she find it in romance? The troupe begins to fragment as member Evan is promoted by his boss, one of Broadway's top directors, to help launch a play written by Declan Pearse, a gifted Irish playwright, that will showcase Cam, one of First Born's most talented actors. Soon two other members announce their engagement, leaving Rosalie feeling further out of the loop and ripe for a secret affair with the famous financier Berglan Starker, who's not only the primary bankroller of the troupe but another member's father. Delbanco, a former Seventeen advice columnist, cleverly frames the chapters of her late bloomer's coming-of-age with samples of Rosalie's light "Ask Annie" columns. Unfortunately, these breezy clips are sometimes more entertaining than the heavier narration of Delbanco's self-absorbed protagonist, whose observations alternate between witty "Edginess is a pheromone; it has physical manifestations" to the less assured and gooey "His kiss was so silvery that every inch of my body melted and my shoes slipped right off me onto the floor" as Rosalie finds the balance between career and love that Delbanco, who shows potential as a prose stylist, hopefully will find in her next novel. Agent, Timothy Seldes. Author tour. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Good advice, bad advice. Columnist Rosalie Preston tries to say the right things to the confused teenagers who write her at Girl Talk, though she's not sure she's qualified to give anyone advice: she just sort of stumbled into the job after temping for the magazine and her own life isn't exactly stable. Which is to say that, at 26, she actually doesn't have a real boyfriend or, um, particular goals or anything. But what's real and what's fake, anyway? Who knows? Rosalie does feel kind of real on stage sometimes, though--and when she's not pretending to work, she does acting with the First Born theater company, along with rich girls, gay guys, and the merely eccentric who are all pretty different from the solid, middle-class types she grew up among. There's Bella Starker, daughter of the billionaire who underwrites most of First Born's expenses (Bella takes cabs and stuff). And Cam and Evan--they're, like, interesting. And there's Grace and, um, some others. Wow. . . is Berglan Starker, Bella's much-married, excessively well-groomed father, coming on to her? Well, chalk it up to experience--albeit not one she can share with her dopey readers or concerned parents--but Rosalie is happy enough to bend over and give all for Berglan. He makes strange old-person pronouncements in an attempt to be polite, which is pretty much lost on Rosalie. Plus, ee-yeww--he has gray hair on his chest. How weird is that? But whatever, she gets to look at a really fabulous view of New York from his fabulous apartment while he's banging away. Then a new love interest arrives on the scene: Declan Pearse, rugged Irish playwright. Should she bag Berglan and decide on Declan? What will her friends think (or do they think?)? Hey, doesn't everything kind of turn out the same no matter what you do? Trite, plotless, self-absorbed debut from a former writer of Seventeen's advice column. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Rosalie Preston, Delbanco's sharp, witty narrator, is an advice columnist at Girl Talk by day and an aspiring actress in her off-hours. She and five of her friends formed a theater company called the First Borns, but as the novel opens, the group is gradually drifting apart. Cam and Evan, their director, have opportunities that might launch their careers, and Grace and Jake, an unlikely duo, have fallen in love. Rosalie feels at odds with the group, and when she drifts into an affair with Berglan Starker, the father of the final First Born member, Bella, she finds herself keeping secrets from her closest friends. Rosalie is especially resentful when Evan gets his hands on a hot play by an up-and-coming Irish writer named Declan. The boorish and sulky Declan immediately repels Rosalie. But even Rosalie, an observant and intelligent commentator if ever there was one, is fallible, too, as she learns when she finds herself actually falling for Berglan. Delbanco's assured, insightful debut is a must-read for the twentysomething set. --Kristine Huntley Copyright 2003 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Rosalie's quest to support her nascent theater troupe leads to her best friend's father. The result? A romantic comedy of manners. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
