The Informed Drinker: In the Beginning, There Was Rum
Why We Don't Like You: Texas A&M Aggies
![Weekend Music Preview: Woven Bones Tour Kick-Off [Beerland / Friday]](http://austinist.com/assets_c/2009/11/beerland_27nov2009_250-thumb-110x110-460924.jpg)
Weekend Music Preview: Woven Bones Tour Kick-Off [Beerland / Friday]
Thief Nabs $10K Flagship Trek Bike From Mellow Johnny's
Government Recalls Cars and Cribs [News Bits]
What do you do when you finally get your life back and it’s broken?
If you’re the heroine of Sarah Bird’s How Perfect is That, the self-monikered Blythe (née Chanterelle) Young, you toss back a Red Bull vodka and Dexedrine and start hustling. And Blythe Young knows hustle. At the beginning of Bird’s seventh novel, Blythe has hustled her way out of her trailer trash childhood to find success atop the Austin dot com bubble as sole proprietor of Wretched Xcess, an event-coordinator catering to the startup nouveau riche.
After the bubble bursts, she—desperate to maintain her newly attained social standing—hustles her way into a Texas blue-blood wedding, only to find herself truly down and out once the marriage disintegrates. Without friends, status, or even so much as a single vial of La Prairie Skin Caviar, and with the IRS hot on her trail, Blythe is forced to take refuge at Seneca House, the housing co-op where she lived as a UT college student in the 90’s.
Things head downhill from there.
Bird has written a tender pratfall of a book. Blythe’s gambits at times take on an I Love Lucy level of absurdity, a this-is-so-crazy-it’s-gotta-work degree of zaniness, but under the comedy is the desperation that comes from losing not just faith but all one’s moral bearings. She’s a woman on the verge of disappearing. And her female adversaries—the social crème de la crème of New Austin, who violently reject her after one of her schemes goes embarrassingly awry—are equally fragile. They’re starter wives, fearfully Working It as hard as they can and always mindful that, as Blythe notes, they started “tarnishing the minute they said ‘I do’”.
“tarnishing the minute they said ‘I do’”.
Here’s an easy question: Just how perfect is How Perfect is That, anyway? The answer: Just about totally nearly perfect, or as close as makes no nevermind.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Yet another book cover with dismembered woman parts. I'm sure the book is charming, but seriously....
I know, Steph, I frickin' hate this trend. It's all on the publishers; I don't think the authors have much input on the covers, especially if they are female authors.
What? Everything looks attached to me.
It's true, but what's really weird is the cursive - this book is clearly written by a woman for women, marketed to women. So why make the cover something for men to gaze upon? Because men still don't understand women, I suppose. I don't.