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Me Times Three [Hardcover]

Alex Witchel (Author)
2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)


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Book Description

January 15, 2002
Everything’s going right for Sandra Berlin.

She is living in Manhattan, climbing the editorial ladder at ultra-chic fashion magazine Jolie!, and she’s just become engaged to Bucky Ross, her high-school sweetheart. Bucky’s her knight in shining WASP armor, a successful ad executive and a descendant of Betsy Ross, and their future promises a life of comfortable suburban bliss: the Tudor mansion, the beautiful children, the country club.

And then, three weeks later, at a party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sandy meets Bucky’s other fiancée.

Who tells her about Bucky’s third fiancée.

Which begins Sandy’s journey through the unfamiliar world of heartbreak and betrayal—and the most excruciating blind dates in the history of singledom. As she tries to piece her life back together, she relies on the common sense and compassion of her best friend, Paul—a rising young film agent, gorgeous, gay, and moneyed—to keep her sane. But even Paul has his secrets, and soon Sandy is forced, on her own, to reexamine her past and, more important, what she wants for her future.

Me Times Three is comic and tender, outrageous and wise—a shrewd, dead-on portrait of a certain slice of New York life. It’s a story about wished-for ideals versus hard realities, about being who you are versus the desire to fit in, and, finally, about how love can surprise us in the most unexpected ways.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Me Times Three narrator Sandra Berlin has just discovered that her fiancé has been cheating on her with not one but two women. She's looking for a support group, one where "I could stand up and say, 'Hi, I'm Sandra and I'm a gullible, pathetic sap.'" Sandra's journey from sap to grownup provides the plot line for the first novel from Alex Witchel, a Style reporter for the New York Times. But the real raison d'être of the novel is the opportunity for Witchel to flaunt her delightfully insiderish view of Manhattan. Sandra works for Jolie, a fashion magazine that sounds a lot like Elle, under the fearsome Susie, a mercurial editor who seems determined to ruin every story Sandra turns in. Plotting and character aren't Witchel's strong points, but the verisimilitude of her evocation of Manhattan media life makes Me Times Three a fun, fluffy romp. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly

New York Times Style reporter Witchel makes her initial foray into fiction with a darkly humorous take on a young woman's growing pains. In late 1980s New York, Sandra Berlin, an editorial assistant at fashion rag Jolie!, enjoys wild times with her requisitely gay best friend Paul Romano, but longs for a secure, suburban family life and ever-elusive social acceptance. She thinks her dreams are coming true when WASPy longtime boyfriend (and Betsy Ross descendant) Bucky finally proposes, and she plans "to waste no time propagating little heirs to the American flag." But she soon must scramble to regain her balance after the rug is pulled out from under her: she's not Bucky's only fiancie; in fact, two other women are preparing to walk down the aisle with him. The first half of the novel is pitched perfectly between humor and angst, but in the second half the plot takes a sobering turn. Sandra faces tragedy when the specter of AIDS raises its ugly head, and only then does she begin coping with the disillusionment of life's unexpected turns. The author will find an audience with readers who follow her in the Times, or who are curious about the talents of Mrs. Frank Rich. But this is a disappointing offering from a writer whose privileged perspective on the culture, manner and style of New York in its late 20th-century heyday might have yielded something less predictable, or at least more titillatingly revealing. (Feb. 1)Forecast: Witchel's name alone, stamped on an eye-catching bright yellow jacket, should sell out the novel's 75,000 first printing, but her future as a fiction writer is less certain.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (January 15, 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0375411798
  • ISBN-13: 978-0375411793
  • Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,531,424 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

82 Reviews
5 star:
 (13)
4 star:
 (15)
3 star:
 (9)
2 star:
 (15)
1 star:
 (30)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
2.6 out of 5 stars (82 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Weirdly amateurish, tired and bad, February 6, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Me Times Three (Hardcover)
I would have expected a LOT more from this writer. There is not a single developed character in the book, and no one that the reader really cares about. The premise -- finding out your great love is engaged to three people -- never really gets adequately explored. It just sort of happens, and while unhappiness is reported, it's never really real. Bridget Jones -- which is the obvious genre Witchell wants to work in -- had the advantage of having a likeable main character to whom the reader could warm up and with whom the reader could identify. Here, neither the writing nor the story are at all compelling. Like many of the post-BJ novels, it's just a not-very-interesting story about a girl who gets dumped and then finds a new guy. Also, it's pretty clear to anyone who knows where Witchell worked in the 90's (Mirabella) that she's trying to settle some score with the then-editor in chief of that magazine. Her flat portrait of her apparent nemesis betrays Witchell's basic inability to get anywhere below the surface of things.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Eh..., February 16, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Me Times Three (Hardcover)
I wanted to like this book, but it simply bored me. Perhaps one had to be of that time and that place (New York in the 1980's) to get thrills out of the supposed true-to-life aspects of this book. But I don't see the appeal to the more average reader. I read a lot, and I have read a lot of similar books, but I just didn't get why this one was hyped, or even published. And did anyone else think the "good guy" with whom the protagonist ends up was an anal, selfish creep? I got to the end of this book and saw that the publishing house carefully informed us who the author's husband was, and thought: A-HA. That's why it's getting decent reviews. Fear of Frank Rich.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Awful, April 5, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Me Times Three (Hardcover)
I debated writing a review of this book because I didn't want to be mean, but in the end I thought if I could spare one reader the agony of trying to read it I would have done the public a service. Sandra is the least likable character I have encountered in a novel in a long while. In fact, I wanted to kick her in the kneecaps everytime she opened her mouth, which was, of course, often as she is the main character. Sadly, I think Witchell's intention was for us to sympathize with her, which I most certainly did not. She brought new meaning to the words self-obsessed and shallow. (And just because it was set in the late 80s is not an excuse). I bought the book because I found the concept of her finacee being engaged to two other woman interesting and thought it would be highly entertaining to read how that would play out. That did not happen. Bucky was little more than yet another thing for her to whine about. She even managed to turn her best friend's illness into her own melodrama. I love an easy-read summer beach book just as much as the next girl, but this one was just not worth the extreme effort it took to read it.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
I knew nothing about art. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
golden box
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Miss Belladonna, Green Hills, Mark Lewis, Susie Schein, Carla Jones, Betsy Ross, Sandra Berlin, Beth Brewer, Girl Frog, Los Angeles, Fifth Avenue, Victoria Segal, Idina Lhasa, Marti Lyons, Bob Hope, Bobby Levine, Charles Buckley, New Haven, Norma Wilder, Palm Springs, Peter Darby, Buck Ross, Buffy Parks, Christmas Eve
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