High Maintenance

April 30, 2001
Brimming with Gotham references, weird but lovable characters and typical urban scenes, Belle's second novel (after Going Down, which won her the title of Entertainment Weekly's Best New Novelist of 1996) is a witty and engaging tale of love and real estate in Manhattan. Liv Kellerman is 26 and recently divorced. In classic New York fashion, she's more upset about leaving her snazzy uptown digs than being single. Too proud to ask her wealthy father for money and lacking an advanced degree, she hits the pavement in search of a job and an apartment—two things every 20-something in the city has had to struggle to secure. After she finds herself a shabby one-bedroom in Greenwich Village, "five flights above a 'restaurant' called King Shawarma," she works on employment. Liv ventures into the cutthroat world of real estate, gets her license and is soon spending her days showing TriBeCa lofts to the city's most discriminating clients. She's surprisingly good at it, and her new profession turns out to be therapeutic, too—her forays into Manhattan's most wanted apartments teach her a thing or two about her own inner workings. Like all New York stories, this one features an eccentric romance: here, a noncommittal boyfriend with a proclivity for biting (at one point, Liv must visit an animal hospital to have her ear reattached to her head). Belle's tongue-in-cheek style and laugh-out-loud antics keep the pages turning. Despite the lack of a riveting story line, this latest addition to the booming yuppie fiction genre is fresh and invigorating. 8-city author tour.

April 15, 2001
This work continues in the same tradition of Belle's highly praised first novel, Going Down (LJ 5/1/96), with equal parts hilarity and pain. Liv Kellerman has just left her husband after discovering his philandering. Never having been on her own before, she embarks on a new career in real estate. This novel is all New York from its high-priced apartments to its quirky characters. Liv begins dating an obsessive architect who likes to bite her. She finds a gun in a bathroom and keeps it, using it to scare aforementioned boyfriend when he turns out to be a liar and a cheat. Adjusting to a Greenwich Village dump after living in a penthouse, Liv shows fabulous apartments to clients who can't decide whether or not to buy them. Belle's portrayal of Liv's ups and downs, successes and failures are in turn funny and poignant. Interspersed are laugh-aloud lines: "When I got home I got undressed and a single pea fell out of my bra. I had gone to work with a pea in my bra and not even known it. Some princess, I thought." The film rights to Belle's first novel were optioned by Madonna; this one should have equal success. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/01.] Kathy Ingels Helmond, Indianapolis-Marion Cty. P.L.

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2001
Real estate is everything in Manhattan. When, at 26, Liv Kellerman separates from her cheating husband, she has no skills, education, or more importantly, she no longer has the fabulous penthouse apartment with a view of the Empire State Building. In desperation, she takes a rundown place in Greenwich Village that spews brown water and has a shower usable only with a pair of pliers, located in the kitchen. After a disastrous job as a reader for a blind judge, Liv decides to get her real-estate license. Discovering she has a real knack for selling property, Liv finds herself in the cutthroat world of high-priced real estate, not only looking for the big sell but also for an apartment she can call home. Liv is young, inexperienced, insecure, and brash, and is surrounded by wacky, eccentric characters who accentuate her qualities, including a two-timing boyfriend with a fetish for biting and a gender-ambiguous employer. Liv isn't the poster girl for strong, independent women, but her story is quite entertaining.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)