Running In Heels
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
'To say that Babs is my closest friend is rather like saying that Einstein was good at sums. And if you've ever had a best friend, you'll know what I mean. Babs and I had such a beautiful relationship, no man could better it. And then she met Simon.'
Now Babs, noisy, funny Babs, is getting married. And Natalie, 27, is panicking. What happens when your best friend pledges everlasting love to someone else? As the confetti flutters, Nat feels her good-girl veneer crack. She teeters into an alluringly unsuitable affair that spins her crazily out of control and into trouble - with her boss, Matt, and with Babs.
Caught up in the thrill of bad behaviour, Nat blithely ignores the truth - about her new boyfriend, her best friend's marriage, her mother's cooking and the wisdom of inviting Bab's brother Andy - slippers and all - to be her lodger. But perhaps what Nat really needs to face is the mirror - and herself...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Is using men and then complaining about how tough it is being a single woman funny? Maxted apparently thinks so, since that is the basis for the first third of her sophomore comic effort (following the well-received Getting Over It), before it veers without warning into the psychology of eating disorders and self-hatred. Natalie Miller, 20-something Londoner, is less than enthusiastic about her sensible boyfriend, Saul. To make matters worse, her best friend, Babs, is getting married, leaving Natalie feeling abandoned. So Natalie takes up with a bad boy who wants to teach her how to be bad, too. Soon, Natalie's hair begins falling out an early warning signal that she's taken her flirtation with anorexia too far and it's Babs to the rescue, functioning as both savior and voice of reason as Natalie gets her comeuppance, finally realizing that people shouldn't be judged by their bodies and that she needs to accept herself. While Maxted, former associate editor of Cosmopolitan UK, understands anorexia well, she has crafted a singularly unsympathetic heroine, one for whom taking up Pilates represents a major life-change. When self-absorbed and childish Natalie complains to her mother that she's sick of being quiet, three-quarters of the way into this bloated whine-fest, fatigued readers will wish that not talking enough really was her problem. Never mind the breakneck pace implied by the title; this one plods along in plimsolls, far too long for a Britcom.
