The Cigarette Girl: A Novel [Paperback]

Carol Wolper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 2000

A furiously funny, clear-eyed novel about a non-bimbo's dating adventures in a town that celebrates bimbosity.

Elizabeth West is twenty-eight, which means she's just entered The Zone--that seven-year span in a woman's life when the pressure to find Mr. Right is at its most intense. For Elizabeth, however, the quest is not about Mr. Right so much as it is about Mr. Maybe. And on some nights, all she's looking for is a little distraction . . .

What complicates Elizabeth's quest are the particulars of her situation. She is a writer of testosterone-heavy screenplays--the blow-'em-up vehicles for eight-figure stars and their bad-boy directors--and therefore deals on a daily basis with men who traffic nearly exclusively in bimbos, which, like smog and palm trees, are a fixture of the L.A. landscape. Though her job requires her to sound like one of the boys (sample dialogue: "I don't deal with dickbrains"), she's very much a girl, from her cell-phone codependency to her chronic attraction to dangerous men. With her female friends succumbing to marriage or morphing into Spermtrappers (women who hunger to be impregnated--husband optional), Elizabeth finds herself questioning the long-term benefits of remaining an SCU (self-contained unit) and looking with new eyes at the mating options around her.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Los Angeles screenwriter like her protagonist, Wolper seasons her slick and accomplished debut with enough new phrases to create a Seinfeldesque vocabulary. At 28, Elizabeth West is entering the Zone, that period between 28 and 35 when women go from being happily single to depressingly single, feeling biologically compelled to settle the issues of marriage and children. But Elizabeth, who scripts action movies and can talk MP5 semiautomatic carbines with the best of them, is reasonable enough not to be looking for Mr. Right. Content to settle for Mr. Maybe, she seeks him among a group of men who include the unattainable director of her film, an architect who "knows all the moves" and her ex-boyfriend, a snake who gives the British a bad name. As she moves closer to completing her selection, however, she must compete with a pack of beautiful bimbos who would make almost any woman feel like a "subfemale gender," even the kind of ultramodern heroine who refuses to play by the infamous man-trapping Rules. Set against a backdrop that includes Lakers games and Oscar parties, the novel is packed with caustic wit, insider knowledge and raunchy girl talk. The dialogue is straight from the hip, with Wolper confidently lampooning the cult of celebrity in a town where the next best thing to knowing Jack Nicholson is knowing a great story about him. Not surprisingly, Elizabeth scripts herself the kind of pyrotechnically bizarre twist of a happy ending that lets the reader know there's a screenwriter in the house, while at the same time proving that there's more than one blueprint for life in the '90s. Agent, Angela Janklow Harrington. Major ad/promo; foreign rights sold in the U.K., Germany, Italy, Holland and Sweden. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Hollywood screenwriter Wolper delivers same in the person of Elizabeth West, and one ardently hopes the similarity ends there. Elizabeth has entered the "zone," the pressured time between 28 and 35 when a Nineties girl must find the right man or be branded a loser. She is in love with her boss, Jake, whose taste in women runs to 21-year-old sex kittens. This witty novel teems with shallow characters centered on themselves, their looks, and their sexual exploits. The hackneyed L.A. types include studio executives, directors, columnists, and actors, all with a predatory sense of their relative position in the Hollywood food chain. Most depressing in this culture of users and players is the accepted, expected, first-date forays into bed. The happy ending? Elizabeth achieves her dream of being Jake's all-American geisha. Despite their careers, liberal use of the f-word, and serious dives into the glories of casual sex, Elizabeth and her friends seem stuck in age-old dilemmas. Well written but insipid; recommended only for the largest fiction collections.ASheila M. Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (June 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573228184
• ISBN-13: 978-1573228183
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,417,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you are looking for a light & trashy read ..., March 6, 2001

By 

Busy Mom (Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Cigarette Girl: A Novel (Paperback)

This book would do it for you! It's not as funny as Isabell Wolff's "The Trials of Tiffany Trott," nor any of Marian Keye's books ~~ for an American writer, this is pretty dishy and funny. If you like reading about sex in L.A. or Hollywood, then this book is it.

Elizabeth West is a free-lance screenwriter who is dreading being in the "Zone." The Zone is that age between 28 and 35 where women start thinking about their biological clock and settling down with a man. So every date is a "Maybe" and most often than not, it's usually a "No Way." Or about how a man would call for the second date and he never does ~~ it's about how women try their hardest to capture a man's attention and how hard they work to keep it ~~ it's a cynical view of dating and marriage.

This book explores a woman's dating life (er, well, sex life) as she tries to find the one man that she would spend her life with. Elizabeth West portrays the average L.A. party girl, fascinated with designer shoes and making it big with her screenplay, keeping in touch with her friends and living life in the fast lane (except drugs ~~ that's not her style, alcohol is more like it). It's not a thought-provoking book by any means, but it is escapism.

The Brits writers (Keyes, Trott etc.) still have the corner on the single woman's plight as she searches for marriage, meaning to life and so on ~~ dashed with lots of humor; but Wolper doesn't do such a shabby job with her first book. It is fun to read and you can still relate to Elizabeth West as she struggles for acceptance in the hardest city of the world ~~ Hollywood. It's a lot more realistic than you expected from Tinseltown, but it's still a glamourous read.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A nice honest look at single life..., January 6, 2000

By 

Jennifer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cigarette Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Cigarette Girl is a very honest novel about life as a single woman approaching 30. Carol Wolper writes a very entertaining tale of a young woman named Elizabeth who encounters many men and writes screenplays for action movies. This book is much like Sex in The City (on HB0) It chronicles the life of a woman, her relationships with her girlfriends, their very frank discussions on sex and dealing with men. A great, easy, quick and funny book. I suggest it to any single woman with a sense of humor about life and men.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Irritating twit, her boyfriends, and their girlfriends., November 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Cigarette Girl: A Novel (Hardcover)

The description on the book jacket looks promising; the book is not. A shallow sex-crazed airhead and her life and loves in L.A. Her main criteria for a man seems to be one who will sleep with her (and that euphemism is *never* used, it's always the "f" word). Men who already have girlfriends are an even bigger draw for this woman, who doesn't care if they leave their girlfriends, just as long as she gets some action on a regular basis. Brand names matter very much to her. Her sense of humor will give you some chuckles, but is not the laugh riot the reviews imply it is. Wolper adequately describes her characters, but unfortunately you quickly come to the conclusion that these are people that you want to avoid at all costs.