Mercury in Retrograde: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Three down-on-their-luck Manhattan women form an unlikely fellowship in Page Six deputy editor Froelich's formulaic—though sometimes funny—debut. Anxious socialite Lena Lippencrass, smalltown transplant–cum–intrepid reporter Penelope Mercury and high-powered lawyer Dana Gluck end up in the same former SoHo tenement building at low points in their lives: Lena, cut off by her wealthy parents, is slumming it on Sullivan Street; Penelope is out of a job after accidentally damaging her office's property; and Dana lives on Weight Watchers while obsessing over her divorce. But once they band together, they right themselves while helping each other. After an initial barrage of New York names and places (and an abundance of parenthetical asides), the novel eventually finds a breezy groove as it traipses through TV newsrooms, high-stakes partnership meetings and a fashion gala at the Met, leading to comically fitting results—and new love interests—for each. Froelich takes a few light shots at socialite Web sites, politicians in prostitution scandals, fashion magazines and drug-addled young celebrities, and the book's message of rejecting gossip and hierarchy is sweetly unexpected, even if everything else is by the numbers. (June)
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Review

"Funny. Breezy. The book's message is sweetly unexpected." -- Publishers Weekly --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Atria (June 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416598936
• ISBN-13: 978-1416598930
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #31,309 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Journalism, Law and Fashion - and hilarity!, May 13, 2009

By	Miz Ellen "all the letters of my real name" (Bovine Universe) - See all my reviews

While this book may have seemed trendy and "hot" as it was prepared for publication, the financial bust that followed the boom makes the start of this charming novel read like a period piece. Penelope Mercury, struggling newspaper reporter, gets sent to the wrong address while on assignment and her psycho boss starts a fight with her when she returns. He tells her he's giving the coveted position as court reporter to his cousin. Without meaning to, she throws up on him and, also accidentally, sets part of the newsroom on fire. She then "quits" the newspaper business. (Newspapers? So yesterday...)

The author introduces us to two other young women. Dana Gluck is a high-powered lawyer. She's already a junior partner in her prestigious law firm, gunning to be the youngest senior partner in history. But she's emotionally a wreck over her recent divorce from her husband of two years. Her hair falls out when she gets too stressed and she never dates.

Lena "Lipstick" Lippencrass is a socialite. She works at a tiny fashion magazine, lives in a posh apartment and spends $50,000/month on clothes. She's engaged in a frantic rivalry with Bitsy, the debutante who stole her boyfriend. When her parents cut off the credit cards because Lipstick hasn't married the man of their dreams, she rebels. Although Lipstick is an irritating character at the beginning, she makes the longest journey and the most interesting transformation.

The author takes about 90 pages to get these three together. Once they become friends and start helping each other out, the book becomes wonderfully engaging as each tackles the issues of making a living and finding meaning in life. One hesitates to call this a "regional" novel; while some of the characters have parents located in places like Ohio, the setting is New York to a claustrophobic degree. The theme of bright young things taking the city by storm has been done before but this author has done it wonderfully well. I like the emphasis on the friendships and the dogged determination these young women show towards making careers for themselves. This is a notch above the usual chick lit. All the happy endings might seem a little too pat but the laughter is real. Fun, feminine and kicks a$$ where it counts!

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A pale echo of "Sex and the City", May 17, 2009

By	Daniel H. Hamilton "danham" (Harwich, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Author Paula Froelich has written a book that under other circumstances might have been made into the blockbuster HBO show "Sex and the City." But those circumstances would have had to include timing - she's too late; character development - there's too little of it; and writing style - her syntax is taxing to say the least.

Here's a quick quote which left me in despair of even being able to finish the book, and it was on page 10 of the advance copy. "It was pitch black in her room, thanks to the double-weight drapes that concealed the entire glass wall to the left of the bed, which led to her Parisian-style garden, with the exception of the faint glow from her laptop lying on the pillow next to her head." Ouch.

I really wanted to like the main character, Penelope Mercury, because she's a struggling journalist. But the tortuous syntax and thin characterization left me with a bad case of "don't care" as the book bounced from inane high-fashion babble to unlikely urban disasters, with very little in the way of compelling transition.

If the endless parade of designer label name-dropping that characterizes the "Sex and the City" movie floats your boat, then you may be able to shop your way through this novel and enjoy it. But if you are instead looking for some substance and some characters whose fates move you to empathy or even sustainable interest, you might want to take a pass on "Mercury in Retrograde."

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Here Come The Not Helpful Votes, June 27, 2009

By	Michael Lima (Fresno, California USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Mercury in Retrograde opens with a definition of Mercury in retrograde; which, to paraphrase astrological terms, means that bad things are about to happen. Given that warning, readers shouldn't be surprised to find that Mercury is still in retrograde when it comes to Froelich's debut effort. The book fails on almost all levels. The storyline looks like it was put together by either a focus group or a marketing executive ("Let's see...most successful chick lit books have one heroine...let's put three in this book...it'll be three times as good!!!"). Making the storyline seem even more derivative is the presence of several scenes that seem to be echoes of similar scenes in other books. Unfortunately, they were done better in those other books (compare the harried television host scenes in this book with those in the Bridget Jones books). Capping this disappointing adventure is a strange "in-this-world, not-in-this world" writing style that Froelich uses throughout the book. This style involves dropping the names of real life celebrities through some of the text, and then using fictional celebrities in the rest of the book. I'm sure that Froelich thought that this method was a clever way of writing a thinly disguised expose. But, it comes across as though she'd only name those who wouldn't sue her for what she wrote, and come up with fake names for those that would likely sue.

The only redeeming quality to this mess is the character of Dana Gluck, who seems to be a real person with an interestingly complex personal situation. Unfortunately, she's the least discussed of the three main characters. And, those scenes with her are not enough to salvage the book. Chick lit fans and book lovers in general should heed the inadvertent warning in the book's opening pages and skip Mercury in Retrograde.