Olivia Goldsmith: Uptown Girl

Reviewed by DAVID GILCHRIST

The author of the comic novel The First Wives Club about three husbands' avarice for younger women, and their vengeful wives, died last month after falling into a coma during
a facelift.

She was just 54 and had released her
latest offering Uptown Girl, which joins the 10 before it in the New York pulp-fiction booksellers bins.

Amusing, Uptown Girl is good enough in its own way, although it's a bloodless substitute if a solid, grey-matter-teasing read is what you are after.

As a New York story, it has all the accents you might find in other work: the Brooklyn Yiddish, the New York Gay, and the sex-and-the-city bravado — but without wit. Simply, Goldsmith has not tried for anything that she and others have not done before.

Blonde beefcake Billy of Brooklyn is a serial monogamist who, having had his way with unsuspecting women, dumps them. Nothing unusual here, except Billy is a conjugal pied piper and once he dumps a woman she goes straight out to marry someone else.

Prada-bag-swinging Kate, apparently immune to Billy's appeal, wants Billy to date and dump her friend Bina so that Billy's magic will work and her friend's wayward fiance will come to heel.

Goldsmith's characters are a tired gag, with title, plot and characters' names little more than a take on Billy Joel's songwriting. Sadly, Goldsmith's last novel is a reminder that too often local authors are over-looked for less talented imports.

* HarperCollins, $21.99

* David Gilchrist is an Australian freelance journalist.