Cigarette Girl

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 2 AUG 1999

A Los Angeles screenwriter like her protagonist, Wolper seasons her slick and accomplished debut with enough new phrases to create a Seinfeldesque vocabulary. At 28, Elizabeth West is entering the Zone, that period between 28 and 35 when women go from being happily single to depressingly single, feeling biologically compelled to settle the issues of marriage and children. But Elizabeth, who scripts action movies and can talk MP5 semiautomatic carbines with the best of them, is reasonable enough not to be looking for Mr. Right. Content to settle for Mr. Maybe, she seeks him among a group of men who include the unattainable director of her film, an architect who "knows all the moves" and her ex-boyfriend, a snake who gives the British a bad name. As she moves closer to completing her selection, however, she must compete with a pack of beautiful bimbos who would make almost any woman feel like a "subfemale gender," even the kind of ultramodern heroine who refuses to play by the infamous man-trapping Rules. Set against a backdrop that includes Lakers games and Oscar parties, the novel is packed with caustic wit, insider knowledge and raunchy girl talk. The dialogue is straight from the hip, with Wolper confidently lampooning the cult of celebrity in a town where the next best thing to knowing Jack Nicholson is knowing a great story about him. Not surprisingly, Elizabeth scripts herself the kind of pyrotechnically bizarre twist of a happy ending that lets the reader know there's a screenwriter in the house, while at the same time proving that there's more than one blueprint for life in the '90s.