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Summary
Summary
Lizzie Nichols is back, pounding the New York City pavement and looking for a job, a place to live, and her proper place in the universe (not necessarily in that order).
When "Summer Fling" Luke uses the L word (Living Together), Lizzie is only too happy to give up her plan of being postgrad roomies with best friend, Shari, in a one-room walk-up in exchange for cohabitation with the love of her life in his mother's Fifth Avenue pied-à-terre, complete with doorman and resident Renoir.
But Lizzie's not as lucky in her employment search. As Shari finds the perfect job, Lizzie struggles through one humiliating interview after another, being judged overqualified for the jobs in her chosen field--vintage-gown rehab--and underqualified for everything else. It's Shari's boyfriend Chaz to the rescue when he recommends Lizzie for a receptionist's position at his father's posh law firm. The nonpaying gig at a local wedding-gown shop Lizzie manages to land all on her own.
But Lizzie's notoriously big mouth begins to get her into trouble at work and at home almost at once--first at the law firm, where she becomes too chummy with Jill Higgins, a New York society bride with a troublesome future mother-in-law, and then back on Fifth Avenue, when she makes the mistake of bringing up the M word (Marriage) with commitment-shy Luke.
Soon Lizzie finds herself jobless as well as homeless all over again. Can Lizzie save herself--and the hapless Jill--and find career security (not to mention a mutually satisfying committed relationship) at last?
Author Notes
Meg Cabot was born in Bloomington, Indiana on February 1, 1967. She recieved a fine arts degree from Indiana University, Meg moved to New York City, intent upon pursuing a career in freelance illustration. Illustrating, however, soon got in the way of Meg's true love, writing, and so she abandoned it and got a job as the assistant manager of an undergraduate dormitory at New York University, and writing on the weekends.
Meg wrote both The Princess Diaries and The Mediator: Shadowland (under the name Jenny Carroll), the first books in two series for young adults which happen to be about, among other things, teenage girls dealing with unsettling family issues. Her latest book is entitled, Insatiable.
Meg now writes full time, and lives in Key West, Florida with her husband.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Midway though Cabot's latest novel, Chaz (the boyfriend of protagonist Lizzie Nichols's best friend) tells Lizzie, "Someday you're really going to have to describe to me in more detail what life is like on the planet you live on. Because it sounds really great, and I'd like to visit there one day." Ultimately, this is what is both problematic and enormously appealing about the work of Cabot, the woman who shot to fame selling the idea that fairy tales really do come true. Lizzie is the fairy tale heroine. She is the fat, awkward girl in all of us, profoundly Midwestern, from the Spanks (modern Spandex girdles) she wears to her indignation at subway rudeness to her insistence on paying her wealthy boyfriend rent for living in his mother's Fifth Avenue apartment. As the book opens, Lizzie has just moved to New York City with her best friend, Shari, and their boyfriends, Luke and Chaz. Lizzie is determined not to become like her acquaintance Kathy Pennebaker, the prototypical smalltown girl who fails in Manhattan and returns home to wander the aisles of the local grocery store loading up on cough syrup for a weekend meth-making session. Things quickly become perfect for Lizzie. Luke asks her to move into his mother's apartment. She finds an amusing though nonpaying job working as a wedding dress restorer with an insane French couple. Lizzie also takes a paying job as a receptionist at Chaz's father's law firm. There are slight problems in paradise: the wedding store where Lizzie works has fallen on hard times and is involved in a rivalry with another wedding dress restorer. Luckily, Lizzie stumbles on a wedding dress gold mine when she befriends a woman who takes cares of seals at the zoo. It turns out that the seal-keeper is about to marry into one of Manhattan's most prominent families; suddenly, the smart crowd is coming to Lizzie's store. But Lizzie's quest to become successful is sidetracked by Shari's relationship problems and Lizzie's conviction that Luke's mother is having an affair and her obsession with the idea that Luke will never marry her. There is something oddly affirming about Cabot's writing. After sitting down with Queen of Babble in the Big City, it is totally clear to me why her books are huge bestsellers. Meg Cabot is nice. She sees the world as a wonderful place, and you want to live in her world and be her best friend. Her characters are charming. There is a school of thought that says reading should be entertaining, and this is exactly what Meg Cabot produces for us: fun. She is the master of her genre; she is the George Bernard Shaw if not the George Eliot of chick lit. Molly Jong-Fast's third book, The Social Climbe's Handbook, will be published by Villard in 2009. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
The Princess Diaries princess offers an adult novel featuring overeager Lizzie, a New York City newcomer who can't get her boyfriend to commit but ends up paying the bills by becoming a marriage mediator. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Queen of Babble in the Big City Chapter One Peyton Shields could feel it coming. no one had tipped her off. No neon lights were blinking. But her sixth sense was in high gear. Peyton was in her first year of residency in pediatric medicine at Children's Hospital, Boston, one of an elite thirty-seven interns chosen from premier medical schools around the world. She'd vaulted to the top through relentless drive, stellar academic credentials, and a mountain of debt to Harvard Medical School. Good instincts, too, were part of the successful package, and at the moment they were telling her that something strange lay ahead. She parked her car in the space marked Physician outside the North Shore clinic, about thirty miles north of Boston in the city of Haverhill. Peyton was at that stage of her professional training where pediatric residents spent three or four days each month at an outlying clinic to broaden their experience. Haverhill was somewhat of a plum as far as clinical assignments went, situated in the affluent Merrimack Valley. Driving out in any direction, you were virtually guaranteed to run smack into a quaint, three-hundred-year-old town whose 98 percent white population earned more than double the state's median annual income. Though not the most charming in the valley, the city was an interesting mix of one of the finest Queen Anne-style streetscapes in America and blue-collar housing that had grown from the once-prominent shoe industry. With roughly 10 percent of its population living below the poverty level, the routine medical needs of its Medicaid children were served primarily by the clinic. Today, that meant primarily by Peyton. "What are you two doing outside?" asked Peyton as she stepped out of the car. It was a fair question. Even though it was a sunny fifty-six degrees--a heat wave for late February--it was highly irregular for Felicia and Leticia Browning to be caught chitchatting outside the front door at nine-thirty in the morning. The clinic's two full-time nurses were identical twins with polar-opposite personalities. Felicia was the more serious sister and a frequent pain in the neck. "Power's out," said Leticia, giggling as usual. "That's weird. All the traffic lights were working on my way over here." "Cuz you was coming from the south," said Felicia. "Power's out from here north." "What happened?" "Earthquake," said Leticia. More giggles. "Very funny." "No joke," said Felicia. "We're on the southern edge of what they call the active zone, thirty miles north of Boston and on up to Clinton. Two dozen quakes in the last twenty-one years. Usually little bitty ones, like this." "How do you know all that?" "We'll always know more than you," said Felicia, only half-kidding. "We're nurses." Leticia pulled a battery-powered radio from her sister's coat pocket. "They just interviewed a Boston College seismologist on the air." "Shut up, fool," said Felicia. "Ah," said Peyton, seeing they really weren't yanking her chain. "I take it there's no backup generator for this place." Leticia just laughed. Her sister said, "Dr. Simons canceled his morning appointments and went home over an hour ago." Good ol' Doc Simons. He ran the clinic, but hands-on he was not. To him, carpe diem meant "seize the day off ." The three women looked at each other in silence, as if soliciting ideas on how to keep busy. Peyton was about to walk inside when a car sped into the parking lot and screeched to a halt. The driver's-side door flew open and a teenage girl jumped out with a baby in her arms. "Somebody--help my son!" She looked barely old enough to drive and sounded even younger. Peyton ran to her and gathered the baby in her arms. "How old is he?" "Twenty-one months," she said in a panicky voice. "His name's TJ. He got stuck with a needle." "Are you his mother?" "Yeah. My name's Grace." "Take him to Room A," said Felicia. "It's got plenty of sunlight." Peyton hurried inside, stepping carefully through the dimly lit hall. The baby's cry was weak, as if he'd wailed to the point of exhaustion. They slid the examination table closer to the window to take advantage of the streaming sunlight, then laid the boy on it. "Needle went in right there," said Grace, pointing at his leg. Felicia aimed a flashlight. Peyton noticed a minor puncture wound inside the thigh. "What kind of needle was it?" "Sewing needle. About an inch long." "Did you bring it with you?" "It's still in his leg." Peyton looked closely but still didn't see it. "You sure?" "The very tip was sticking out at first. I tried to work it out, you know, like a sliver. But it disappeared inside him." Leticia slipped a small blood-pressure cuff onto the boy's right arm and pumped it. "You're sure it was a sewing needle, child?" "What else would it be?" Felicia grabbed the girl's wrists and rolled up her sleeves. "Show me your arms." Grace resisted, but Felicia was much stronger. "I'm no druggy. Leave me alone." The arms were trackless, but Felicia wasn't finished. "You shoot between your toes, girl? Or is it your boyfriend who does the drugs and leaves his needles laying around?" "Nobody is on drugs, so just go to hell!" Peyton was about to side with the girl, but then she noticed the marks on the backs of her legs just below the hemline of her skirt. "Is that blood behind your knees?" Grace backed away. The nurse grabbed her and hiked up her skirt. The backs of her thighs were pockmarked with bloody needle holes. "What is going on here, child?" said Felicia. "My boyfriend did it." "Did what?" asked Peyton. "We got in a fight. He started jabbing me with this stick of his, so I grabbed TJ and ran out the door. He got TJ in the leg, and the needle broke off when I jerked away." "What kind of stick has a sewing needle on it?" "He made it himself. A broomstick with a needle on the end of it. He uses it when I jog." Queen of Babble in the Big City . Copyright © by Meg Cabot. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Queen of Babble in the Big City by Meg Cabot All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.