Women About Town [Paperback]

Laura Jacobs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 29, 2003

Debut novelist Laura Jacobs joins an elite group of authors (Jane Austen, Nancy Mitford, Diane Johnson) whose novels celebrate intelligent, modest, witty, and endearingly funny women.

Iris Biddle is forty years old and determined to take it gracefully. What she'd really like is to wake up one morning with all errands done, her posh custom-lampshade business ahead of schedule, and absolutely no worries. Lana Burton is a young theater critic moving up the New York hierarchy, but she's learning that some friends resent a slow climb as much as a fast one. The setting is Manhattan, but women everywhere can identify with Iris and Lana as they struggle to keep friendships afloat, the checkbook balanced, the career moving, and the morale up, not to mention achieving their dreams while staying true to themselves.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Swapping journalism for fiction, Jacobs (The Art of Haute Couture) laces a gossipy guilty pleasure with feeling and sophisticated wit. Her cosmopolitan protagonists cat fight, take tea and climb professional ladders in New York City's most stylish neighborhoods. Elegant Iris Biddle, once married into an old money Mayflower family, is now divorced and 40. Romantically, she refuses to settle for second best, but is too busy with her career as a designer of stylish lampshades to concentrate on husband hunting. Lana Burton, 34, is a theater critic who writes for a respected dance journal, then lands a plum assignment for Vanity Fair. She has a knack for estranging her slightly older female colleagues, but is able to hold on to Sam, her commitment-phobic boyfriend of two years. The ambitious Manhattanites' concerns sacrificing shopping sprees at Bergdorf's in favor of paying bills, gaining prestige in their respective fields are similar, though they don't meet until the end (they share equal star time in alternating chapters). Jacobs effectively avoids clich‚ by treating Iris and Lana with gravity and respect, making them dedicated and focused on their careers. She also paces the novel quite well and turns an interesting phrase now and again ("wrinkled widows with vinegar voices"). In-the-know followers of Jacobs will indulge themselves, as will the nonurbanite who wants to catch a glimpse into these women's rarified worlds.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Jacobs, a Vanity Fair editor and dance critic with Chicago roots, no doubt drew on elements of her own experiences to create Lana Burton and Iris Biddle, this first novel's two main characters. Burton is a 35-year-old writer with a passion for theater and dance, originally from suburban Chicago, as is 40-year-old Iris, a sophisticated and reserved maker of silk lampshades. The link between them is Deena, the real-estate broker who found their Manhattan apartments and befriended both. The novel alternates between the lives of these two characters. Lana begins to make a name for herself as an arts writer, while worrying that her boyfriend is unwilling to commit. Also worried that she will always be alone, Iris concentrates on finding New Yorkers willing to spend $3,000 on a lampshade. In a way that is neither melodramatic nor patronizing. Jacobs explores the fears and loneliness of women past the age at which society expects them to be married. Quiet prose and well-developed characters distinguish this insightful look at the lives of today's career woman. Beth Warrell
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

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (April 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142002771
• ISBN-13: 978-0142002773
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,337,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent novel about professional women in NYC, August 27, 2002

By 

CoffeeGurl - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Women About Town (Hardcover)

This smart and witty novel hits the nail in the head when it comes to New York women's preoccupation with having a successful career. Iris Biddle and Lana Burton have one thing in common: ambition. The two Manhattanites are too caught up in their careers to make room for relationships. Especially Iris who, having experienced a painful divorce, is neither desperate nor inclined to find Soul Mate Number Two. And climbing the corporate ladder is the only thing in Lana's agenda. A theater critic that lands a job in Vanity Fair, she might as well say goodbye to love.

Women About Town is an intelligent novel about the pitfalls of being a career woman in Manhattan. New York is the perfect backdrop for this novel. This is certainly an excellent read and I highly recommend it.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The City, Two Women, And Art -- Wonderfully, November 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Women About Town (Paperback)

Six months after reading this novel I still think of prim, careful Iris and her silk-covered lampshades. The novel is quiet and contained, and does something that few others do: portray the way that women interact with one another -- sometimes nicely, sometimes meanly -- in a balanced and sympathetic way. Anyone who appreciates Jane Austen's Elizabeth and Elanor or felt that a piece of the sad but surviving Mirabelle from Steve Martin's Shopgirl was inside of them would also enjoy this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Intellectual, Wordy, and Boring, July 21, 2003

By 

Ellen b (Long Island United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Women About Town (Hardcover)

You really have to pinch yourself to keep awake for this book. It reminds me of something they made you read in school - you know that there is a lot of stuff going on under the surface, but you don't really care, and you are left waiting for some action. I skipped over entire paragraphs with wordy descriptions of nothing. If you must read this, get it out of the library and save your money.