How Perfect is That

March 10, 2008
In the latest from seasoned Texan social satirist Bird (The Flamenco Academy
, etc.), Blythe Young’s recent divorce from Trey Dix has left her outside the protective bubble of Austin’s high society. As her catering business goes broke and the IRS starts to chase her down, Blythe seeks a haven at Seneca House, the housing co-op where she lived 10 years ago during college. There, she must face Millie Ott, one of many friends Blythe shucked off in a frenzy of social climbing. Once portly Millie is now slender and, as a perfect foil for Blythe, also saintly: she delivers aid to the homeless by way of a tandem recumbent bike (which Blythe names the “dorkocycle”). At Seneca House, Blythe tries to make amends with people she’s stepped on, to avoid the IRS, and to kick both a lingering drug habit and an addiction to scamming people into helping her out. She slowly starts to wins over the affection of her housemates until one of her unthinking decisions brings potential ruin on the co-op’s financial well-being. The result is a laugh-out-loud addition to Bird’s long line of estrogen-fueled dramedies.

May 1, 2008
Unscrupulously self-aggrandizing, unconscionably self-centered, Blythe Young leaves a toxic wake of debts, doubts, and destruction wherever she goes. Once the trophy wife of the scion of one of Austins most socially prominent families, she survived a precipitous fall from grace and now struggles to maintain the kind of Chanel-suited, Cristal-swigging lifestyle to which she had become addictively accustomed. Determined to keep her Jimmy Chooclad foot in their butler-attended doors, Blythe embarks on a career as a party planner for her erstwhile society pals; but when they discover shes been palming off Piggly Wiggly liverwurst as Parisian pt', Blythe quickly becomes persona non grata. When shes forced to reconnect with her frumpy college roommate, Millie, in a desperate attempt to polish up her tarnished reputation, Blythe discovers that even the oldest friendships come with statutes of limitation. Although Blythes shamelessly egotistical behavior can be a bit over the top, Bird nevertheless infuses her riches-to-rags tale with enough smart, sardonic satire and irresistibly irreverent irony to uproariously outweigh any moral misgivings.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)