Customer Reviews

Little Pink Slips

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Little Pink Slips is delicious fun. Warning: you will stay up all night reading this novel. Sally Koslow obviously knows the magazine industry from the inside-out. You will cheer on her heroine, Magnolia Gold, as she battles a nut job of a celebrity (who might remind you of a famous TV star), back-stabbing colleagues and the occasional sample sale.

This book is notches above chick-lit. If Edith Wharton dropped in on a women's magazine in 2007, she'd offer the same whip-smart look at the social habits of shrewd, well-paid women who believe in the holy trinity of good hair, good shoes and good bags. Witty, juicy and delicious. You definitely want to read this book.

At eight months pregnant, I can't drink, I can't smoke, I can't eat sushi, ambien is a no-no and I have to be nice to my husband because he's the one who is going to drive me to the hospital when I go into labor. In short - I have no vices - until now...Little Pink Slips is so deliciously decadent, entertaining, lol funny -- and most importantly wonderfully written - that it's the most I've had since making this baby. I simply can't put it down. I am pulled into every scene - one of my favorites is Chapter six where Magnolia meets BeBe and her go-to "B" for the first time. I felt like I was there at breakfast!!!!!! Warning this is not chick-lit -- more like "Lady Lit"

LITTLE PINK SLIPS is the ultimate insider's story. For years, author Sally Koslow had been the Editor-in-Chief of the venerable "McCall's" magazine. Suddenly, the powers-that-be in the head office decided to turn the publication over to Rosie O'Donnell--who had had no magazine experience--putting Koslow in an inferior position on the masthead. As it would turn out, even that inferior position did not last too long; eventually, of course, neither did Rosie.

LITTLE PINK SLIPS is Koslow's fictionalized version of this segment of her professional life.

While LITTLE PINK SLIPS easily could have disintegrated into a revenge novel, the author does not let that happen. She never is mean in telling this story, much as she may have been tempted to take her swipes. In fact, her Rosie surrogate often seems likeable, even when she's out of control.

Yet this novel is not about media stars, fictional or real. It is about Magnolia Gold, the original editor of the ficticious "Lady" Magazine: about her efforts to keep the magazine's standards high, her attempt to stand up to the loud mouth boss who is brought in above her and, finally, it is about her struggle to resurrect her professional life after she is excessed.

In telling this story, Koslow offers some wonderful glimpses into what it takes to put out a first-class magazine, giving readers a true fly-on-the-wall perspective. Her descriptions of Magnolia's co-workers are hilarious and one cannot help wondering on whom she based some of these characters.

She tells the story with objectivity and thoroughness and with a commendable amount of humor. This humor, while often laugh-out-loud, is especially admirable in light of the fact that the plot mirrors a dark (and very conspicuous) episode in Koslow's own life.

Equally good are the author's insights into upper-class New York life in these early years of the new millennium. She covers so much of the city's rhythms, from the best nursery schools to the best restaurants to the best cooperative apartment buildings to the best sample sales to the best hairdressers....Well, on every level, LITTLE PINK SLIPS is the best of the best.

Ladies, you will rue the moment you are forced to put this gem down, as I did when I had to go pick up my kids from school! I was completely enthralled from the first page behind-the-scenes look at a NYC Chanel sample sale, devoured the details about life in the magazine world, and more tellingly fell immediately in love with the quirky, slightly neurotic, totally likeable, done-wrong-by Magnolia. LPS is so much more than a voyeristic look into the shambles of a once strong magazine (think McCall's) after a loud-mouth celebrity (you know who) and the magazine's publishers decided to re-vamp the beloved mag in the image of said celeb. Sure, it's fun to wonder about which details in the book came from Koslow's experience as the wrongly ousted editor in the McCall's/Rosie debacle; but what's more fun is becoming completely enraptured in this story's characters and their confidently shaky walks through the world of magazine publishing and relationships, of the friend and spouse kind, that will leave you with a new favortie author to add to your list. Koslow's writing style is like chick lit having gone to an esteemed Ivy league school - her wit is charming, her prose simply perfect, all making for a biting, totally engrossing read. This one will be on the best-seller lists and will leave you wanting to know when Koslow's next novel will hit the stands!

Little Pink Slips is a well-written, sometimes entertaining, fictional account of Sally Koslow's experience at McCall's when Rosie O'Donnell took over. While I felt parts of the novel were well done, this novel is ultimately unsatisfying. Koslow takes her real life experience and tries to shoehorn it into Chick Lit and it just does not entirely work. The humor is OK, not hilarious. The love interest subplots feel forced and there is way too much superfluous name-dropping. However, there are a lot of chick lit books out there that are much worse (the dreadful Devil Wears Prada comes to mind). Koslow writes with intelligence, but this one is a little lacking. I would not write Koslow off entirely, but manage your expectations on this one.

Move over Chick Lit, enter Smart Women's Comedy.

From her Fekkai-perfect highlights to her size 7 pink Chanel kitten heels, you'll love Magnolia Gold--but there's more to the protagonist of this hip, fast-paced, and extremely witty look at the magazine industry than meets the eye. Impossible to put down, laugh-out-loud funny, and full of insider juice, Little Pink Slips is a modern woman's fairy tale.

I think Sally Koslow has a real story to tell and that would be more interesting than the fictional one. (Where do these men come from? Not the real world.) It has its moments, but the most interesting parts are about the magazine, not the people.

This novel was like a time machine, whooshing me back 10 years, when I was still an executive editor. Do I know women's magazines? You bet --- more than 20 years' worth. Does Sally Koslow (with whom --- full disclosure --- I'm acquainted)? Yes, indeed. A former editor-in-chief of McCall's, she has parlayed her experience into a most entertaining DEVIL WEARS PRADA-style novel.

The real-life counterpart here, though, isn't the world of Vogue and other high-end fashion titles but the Rosie contretemps of 2000-2003. In an attempt to imitate Oprah's magazine success, the publishers of McCall's --- here called Lady --- formed a partnership with Rosie O'Donnell to turn a rather traditional women's publication into a celebrity-driven blockbuster. (Although Koslow didn't work directly with O'Donnell, she knew a lot of people who did, and she seems to have a firm grasp on all the juicy details.) The venture didn't work, to put it mildly; O'Donnell left the magazine and the publishers sued her for breach of contract. In LITTLE PINK SLIPS, as in the actual trial, the judge dismissed the case, awarding damages to neither party.

There's an autobiographical element as well: The lead character, Lady editor-in-chief Magnolia Gold, is, like Koslow, a nice Jewish girl from Fargo, North Dakota, who migrates to New York, New York. Magnolia is instantly likable: smart, ambitious, crazy about her work, and insecure in a way most of us will recognize ("Any minute now, she'd be exposed as the cubic zirconia she truly believed she was"). As the story begins, Magnolia has brought Lady back from the circulation doldrums and is pitching a re-design for the magazine. Instead, she is demoted by the demonic, sexual-harassment-prone CEO, Jock Flanagan, to make way for Bebe Blake, a raunchy diva who is Koslow's Rosie clone. Misery!

But Magnolia survives (you never doubt that she will), and she and her best friend, jewelry designer Abbey Kennedy, go in for plenty of romance, sex, shopping and jogging along the way. Magnolia --- who, like most Chick Lit heroines (think Bridget Jones, who started it all), is romantically challenged --- even returns to Fargo on a speech-making junket and has a fling of sorts with her high-school ex, now a minister. Kinky!

It doesn't take long for Bebe to do a thorough job of making her eponymous monthly a disaster area and for Magnolia, briefly relegated to the dingy backwaters of corporate life, to rise again. Koslow really nails the industry's pungent combination of gossip and glamour, daily grind and daily manicures, polished looks and (sometimes) mean little hearts. (Reader, I identified.) It all ends more or less well --- I especially appreciate the way Koslow avoids the conventional happy-ever-after. Far from having Magnolia forfeit her professional success for the sake of a guy, in this book work consistently trumps love. (When Abbey asks Magnolia to make a birthday wish, she thinks: "A better man? A better job? Both, definitely, but not in that order.")

I do have some caveats: Since Magnolia evinces such enthusiasm for the nuts-and-bolts and camaraderie of her job (the book brought back some happy memories as well), I might have wished that there was a little more actual editing in LITTLE PINK SLIPS --- of the pencil-to-paper, think-up-a-great-cover-line, deal-with-an-ornery-author variety. And I wouldn't have minded the characters being a bit less from Central Casting: the bitch, the kook, the cad, and so forth. Still, in the show-biz world of high-end publishing, sometimes personalities are larger than life --- when you consider that Rosie O'Donnell has once again made headlines by leaving "The View" under highly contentious circumstances, perhaps Koslow's portrait is not so unrealistic after all.

Besides, LITTLE PINK SLIPS, while not great literature (the brand names do get awfully thick on the ground), is great fun. Koslow, bless her, knows she isn't writing THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, and there is a welcome absence of pretension in the way she goes about her business (I actually prefer her to the trying-too-hard-to-be-clever Plum Sykes). Many Chick Lit novels are so exhaustingly snarky that you wind up not caring what happens to the characters. Although Koslow can be witty ("Magnolia adjusted her face to a few notches above blasé but comfortably below bootlicking"), her tone never gets too brittle: Underneath the smart-aleckisms is a welcome optimism and honesty. And the pacing is great.

Think of LITTLE PINK SLIPS as lingerie in book form --- frivolous but irresistible --- and you won't be sorry you brought it home.

--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

Little Pink Slips is wonderful--like devouring a box of Vosges truffles, only better--all guilty pleasure, no calories. Magnolia Gold is smart and funny, tough and humane, even with her nemesis, Bebe Blake. I loved the delicate handling of Magnolia's reunion with the Rev. Tyler, and the fraught firing and court scenes. Sally Koslow can turn a phrase, too; I turned seven shades of chartreuse with envy at her simile comparing snowflakes to "tiny doilies" (so lovely and right). Pick up a copy and slip into Magnolia's world right away.

I devoured this book as if it were a cupcake from Magnolia Bakery. For me, it was a master class in writing hip, funny, smart prose---and absolutely delectable from the first word to the last. The protagonaist and her posse are just the type of women you want to have as your friends, and even the she-villian has moments of true-likability. Warning: potions of this book are "snort-diet-coke-through-your-nose" funny.