Dumping Billy [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [MP3 CD]

Olivia Goldsmith (Author), Bernadette Quigley (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 10, 2004

There's something magical about Billy Nolan. It's not just that the Brooklyn bar owner is wickedly handsome; it is also that any woman he dates and dumps - and he dumps them all - immediately goes on to marry the next man she meets. But Kate Jameson is immune to his charms. She left Brooklyn for upward-mobility in Manhattan at the first chance she got, and she's not about to fall for some cad from the old neighborhood. But when her best friend Bina's engagement is broken off, Kate hatches a plan: all she has to do is get Billy to date and dump Bina. Then they'll wait for Bina's wayward fiance to return for the magic to happen. But the one thing Kate hasn't counted on is how Billy feels about the whole plot - and how she begins to feel about Billy. She may have changed her style, but her roots are showing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kate Jameson has outgrown her Brooklyn gang: Bina, Bunny, Barbie and Bev, aka the Bitches of Bushwick. While the Bs still go for French manicures and (gasp) matching furniture, Kate has embraced the urbane life. She has a Chelsea apartment and a neat job as school psychologist at Andrew Country Day "in the best neighborhood in Manhattan." But when Kate meets bad boy bar owner Billy Nolan in her natal borough, she instantly wants to get Brooklyn back into the girl. He's hot for her, too, but fate intervenes in the form of Kate's best friend, Elliot Winston. Elliot and his boyfriend, Brice, are determined to keep Kate from committing romantic folly yet again. In a plot twist that the late Goldsmith (The First Wives Club, etc.) might have called Queer Eye for the Straight Goy, Elliot notices that every time Billy dumps a girl, she marries the next guy she dates. So instead of following heart and loins to Billy's bed, Kate helps Elliot engineer a match between Billy and Bina, whose putative fiancé, Jack, went to Hong Kong without giving her the anticipated diamond. Minor complications abound, as Bina dates Billy but falls for someone else, and Kate's burning jealousy blinds her to the truth long after the reader sees it. Goldsmith's fans will perhaps forgive the almost farcical absence of reality; others may resent not only the illogic but also the stereotyping of gays, Jews, working-class Catholics and nearly everybody else. If Goldsmith had affection for her characters, she hid it well.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Katherine "Kate" Jameson is proud of how she made the break from her Brooklyn roots: she earned her Ph.D and now works in an exclusive Manhattan school. She has never introduced her old, tacky Brooklyn group to her new, sophisticated friends, especially Elliot, whose gay sensibilities would find the Brooklyn brood uncouth--or so she assumes. Her worlds collide, however, when her Brooklyn friend Bina gets dumped instead of engaged. Bina breaks down in front of Elliot and his classy partner, Brice, and to Kate's amazement, they prove very helpful. Bina, despite her provincial ways, has always been a wonderful friend, which is why Kate blanches at the plan Elliot and Brice hatch: Bina must date the gorgeous Billy Nolan, get dumped, and then marriage to her ex will surely follow. As the shenanigans unfold, Kate hopes Bina doesn't get hurt along the way and that her own feelings for Billy stay beneath the surface. This is Goldsmith's final novel, released only months after her untimely death this past January, and it contains all of the elements that have made her so famous and loved in the first place: wacky heroines exacting revenge on the male species. Fun, silly, and sure to please her fans. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• MP3 CD
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio on MP3-CD; MP3 Una edition (June 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159335309X
• ISBN-13: 978-1593353094
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,242,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Who Really Wrote this Novel?, June 6, 2004

By 

rcarey22 (New York) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dumping Billy (Hardcover)

I have read and thoroughly enjoyed the following novels by Olivia
Goldsmith:

The First Wives Club
Flavor of the Month
The Bestseller
Fashionably Late
Marrying Mom
Switcheroo
Young Wives
Bad Boys (although a lot of you disliked it, I actually enjoyed it)
Pen Pals

and have concluded, in my opinion, based on Ms. Goldsmith's untimely death, Dumping Bill was not Olivia Goldsmith's finished product. The plot may have been Olivia's but this story does not fit the in depth characterizations of her previous works.

Although I would not recommend passing on "Dumping Billy", as I found it interesting that a lot of us still mistake good looks with stupidity, cockiness or something worse. There are times when you have to look under the surface of an individual or a situation to perhaps find something you might have otherwised missed, like a good person who assumes an undeserved title without actually knowing it exists. The lesson I learned here was "you can't judge a good book by its cover".

Just beware this novel does not compare to the wonderful novels Olivia Goldsmith has defined throughout the years and you will come away asking the same question I did "Who Really Wrote this Novel"?

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars One of Goldsmith's weakest....., May 27, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Dumping Billy (Hardcover)

I have read all of Olivia Goldsmith's books, and I found this one to be among the worst. It seems like she wrote it in a matter of days- if she wrote it at all! It's silly, predictable, and the characters aren't much fun at all. They lack the depth and lovable flaws that attract us to her characters in most of her books. And while novels aren't supposed to be realistic, this one is so far-fetched it is irritating. "Bad Boy" was unlike many of her books because it did not have a large ensemble cast like "Billy," but at least that was funny and a decent read. This seems like it was written to appeal to teen girls.

Missing from this book are Goldsmith's sharp wit, great character development and fun plot twists. It's a good thing that this author will be remembered for her works like "The First Wives' Club" and "Flavor of the Month" and not for poor efforts such as this. If you're new to Olivia, leave this one on the shelf and pick up ANY of the others she wrote.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Please do not purchase this book!, July 16, 2004

By 

J. Guthrie (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dumping Billy (Hardcover)

Dumping Billy is the last book by Olivia Goldsmith. I doubt it represents how she would have liked to be remembered.

Kate has a serious superiority complex-
Her old friends from Brooklyn just do not get her anymore, now that she is a "Doctor" (school psych.) in Manhattan.
Of one friend: "Bina definitely had an irony deficiency." To another: "You've had a haircut? Nope, just had my ears lowered." Those New Yorkers and their witty repartee! Who could expect the poor folks in Brooklyn to keep up with snappy patter like that?

Kate must be referred to as the protagonist, as she is certainly the central character, but a long way from a heroine. (Except, perhaps, her own.) She is elitist, smug, and insufferable:
"Her apartment was in Chelsea, but Kate could pass for a downtown hipster."
"she was grateful for all she herself had learned about style from Brice, college, Manhattan boutiques and her current New York friends."
"But now that she had a circle of intellectual, cosmopolitan pals, she could give up the frustration over Bina's provincial interests and conversation and simply love her good heart."

I don't know about you, but I HATE this woman!

I kept waiting for Kate to come to the realization that she was narrow minded and small- I thought the point of the book must be her transformation. Alas, no. Although she doesn't seem bright enough to have completed the SAT (let alone a doctorate) and she is a wretched specimen of a human being, she is rewarded. I expect this from life, but pop novels usually follow more logical standards of good and evil.

The sophomoric dialogue is peppered with witty retorts like "Uh, duh!" and other lines I'm loathe to repeat, but in the interest of saving others the afternoon of pain I just experienced, I'll elaborate:
Kate leaves her (homosexual) friends:
'Say goodnight, Gracie.' 'Goodnight, Gracie,' Elliot and Brice chorused."
(Gay men are so clever.)

Kate refers to her Brooklyn girlfriends as her crew and her posse. Do thirty-one year old professional women in Manhattan do this?

"If she but knew it, she easily looked the most elegant woman in the room." (Oh god. I felt like I was reading a Babysitters Club book.) And is the line a joke? Every page previous to this seemed to exist only to reinforce how wonderful Kate thinks she is!

Billy says: "And I can date anyone I want!"
Our protagonist responds: "Not anyone. You can't date me! You're just a Mick who never even got out of Brooklyn. The trick with you is you are slightly better looking on the outside than you are on the inside, and the inner and the outer you are in constant conflict. That's why you don't know you're a loser."
This is the conversation of a Psychologist?

Again with Billy, Kate (the Doctor) tells him that he has a repetition compulsion. He references the DSM IV, and mentions the fact that Freud isn't terribly popular these days, then he says "And I don't have a petition.. whatever."
It certainly seems logical to ME that a man who quotes Freud and the DSM IV would have problems with a big word like repetition.

As others have suggested, I doubt this book was written by Goldsmith. Her books weren't literature, but they were well crafted and amusing.
This book was probably written after Goldsmith's death, (maybe based on an idea she was working on) by a white professional heterosexual male, most likely in his twenties.

A terrible waste of trees...