Girls in White Dresses

Narrator Emily Janice Card brings a fresh perspective to this series of vignettes about a group of friends who are coping with the uncertainties of life after college. Isabella, Mary, and Lauren find that their adult lives are not living up to their expectations as they support each other through mediocre dates, bar crawls, and career disappointments. As the book progresses, minor characters are brought in, and the interlocking stories shed light on the women's relationships. Card's narration adds an appealing immediacy to the thinly drawn characters. She also heightens the book's sly humor with a lighthearted tone, and her girl-next-door delivery helps the listener engage with the characters. A.M.R. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

May 30, 2011
Artfully spare prose adds a literary tinge to the chick lit staplesânavigating relationships, bridesmaid duties, disappointing first jobsâexplored in Close's debut collection. At their weakest, the stories owe too much to their predecessors: "The Showers," in which the recurring characters travel to a suburban bridal shower, is essentially a retelling of a snappier Sex and the City episode, and Isabella's boss in "Blind" has the dark shades of The Devil Wears Prada. The standout moments come in "The Peahens," when Abby reveals her unusual family and her struggle to fit in (she "studied hard, taking notes on the silver link bracelets all the girls wore"), and the sharp "Hope," when Shannon takes a backseat to her boyfriend's naïve political passion for "the Candidate" of a presidential campaign. Occasionally funny (as when Isabella refers to her dinner dates as "parallel eating"), but without the risk taking of The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing or the deeply explored emotion of Prep, these stories will resonate with readers in the throes of the quarter-life churn who can see themselves in the cast.