The Pretty One, a novel by Lucinda Rosenfeld, reads like a grab-bag of current topics cadged right out of chick magazines.

Rosenfeld populated her story with three sisters approaching middle age, yet still playing out all their old sibling rivalries. One of them is The Pretty One. Another is The Control Freak. The last is The Lesbian.

Then Rosenfeld worked extra hard to stuff all 800 e-pages with relevance (which may make her book awfully dated 20 years from now). Along with the sibling tussles, along with marital ennui and stolen kisses — you know, those human troubles that make perpetually good story material — we have:

  • — control issues
  • — commitment issues
  • — a recession
  • — kiddie bedtime struggles
  • — aging parents
  • — donor conception
  • — Zoloft prescriptions
  • — scheduled married sex — the horror!

Have we covered it all?

Then there are the characters’ jobs. At art museums. At non-profits. I’ve been waiting a long time for a book with a barber protagonist, or maybe a doctor’s office nurse. My hopes run thin.

Then there are the clothes. Yes, I think it matters whether the character arrives at a wedding in a t-shirt, or has to cross the desert in a business suit. But do I need to know that baby sister chose a boatneck shirt with a shredded hem? Do you need to know that kind of stuff?

And I’m still unenlightened about the problems and worries of pretty people. I was so hoping to live, just for a week, inside the mind of somebody who knows she turns heads. What keeps her awake at night? Is she sick of being told she’s gorgeous? Does she ever wonder how the rest of us big-nosed humans can tolerate ourselves?

Maybe Rosenfeld meant the whole thing as a comedy.

It was all a little too contrived  to shoot this book up to the top shelf.

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