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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 4, 2003)
Winter Reading 2003-2004 Mother Kali’s B O O K S Conscious shopping. Think of Mother Kali's for your holiday gifts. CALENDARS • CANDLES • JEWELRY • CDS • TAROT DECKS • BUTTONS • BUMPER STICKERS Wonderful selection of children and adult books, including gay and lesbian titles. GIFT CERTIFICATES AVAILABLE 720 E. 13th Ave • Eugene, OR 97401 • 541-343-4864 kali@efn.org • www.motherkalis.com Single Girl Blues Me Times Three by Alex Witchel. Touchstone, 2002. Paperback, $13. I n Me Times Three, 26-year-old Sandra Berlin discovers that her high school and college sweetheart and now fiancée, Bucky Ross (descended from Betsy Ross), has been cheating on her with two other fiancées. It’s the late 1980s, and Sandra works in Manhattan as an editorial assistant for Jolie magazine. Until she dis- covers Bucky’s infidelities, Sandra’s bid- ing her time, looking forward to the wed- 14 DECEMBER 4, 2003 ding day and getting promoted from edito- rial assistant to wife and mother. After Bucky, Sandra finds herself thrust into the reality of her own life. With her dreams to marry into the Betsy Ross lineage dashed and the promotion to wife and mother nowhere in sight, she faces instead her unsatisfying job working for a Jolie editor she fears and dislikes. Sandra also has to get into the Manhattan dating scene, and anyone who’s seen HBO’s “Sex and the City” knows that the scene can be one serious pool of sharks. (In an interesting side note, Sarah Jessica Parker, the star of “Sex,” provides a review blurb for the book.) The chapters that enumerate Sandra’s awk- ward, excruciating social interactions mer- cifully compress the year of dating to a few names and scenes. Finally, in a major subplot, Sandra must accept the fact that her best friend from college, a gay man named Paul Romano, is dying of AIDS. Here Witchel really recaptures the fear and panic of the ‘80s when AIDS was so new, terrifying and real. Me Times Three falls into the class of “chick lit” — books about smart, modern women searching for love and luck, all the while worrying about body image and per- fect outfits. I’m not a huge fan. I wonder what Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen or Emily Dickinson would think to see women’s lit- erature evolved to quick-read novels with girly, cartoonish covers aimed at the
