Hot Town, Super in the City

Super in the City by Daphne Uviller is (Devil Wears Prada aside) my first true foray into what society at large has not-so-lovingly dubbed “chick lit.” I must say that I was more inclined than most to read this book and even more inclined to like it, having become e-quainted with said author over the past few months (she just seems wonderful). And yet…?

The book’s main flaw is its very genre. Chick lit is by nature infuriating with its rampant escapism, its unattainable alternate realities and, at the gushy heart of any chick lit book, its mythical One striding about in a very manful manner. It is nice to delve into and even disappear into this relatively tidy little world where you just know everything is going to eventually work out. It’s peppy and comforting and wonderfully distracting, but it is not real. The moment you lift your nose out of any chick lit book’s light pages, you immediately crash. On the cover of this book, Elizabeth Gilbert compares the novel to candy (“intelligent candy,” mind you) and I think that is very much accurate of the genre. You get this happy little sugar rush reading and then, once done, you crash back to reality with very little residual buzz to show for your time. It’s disheartening even as you were moments ago reveling in your sunny little chick lit world.

However, setting the main constraints of the genre itself aside, the book was not in and of itself at all bad. In fact, I just plain old liked it! There isn’t anything really deeper to read into that or anything to really comment on why or why not, I just liked it. The book is the simple, friendly little tale of an extremely likable woman with the fantastic name of Zephyr Zuckerman. She merrily skips through the novel, going through a range of emotions and catastrophic situations before finally getting her perfect, rainbow over Manhattan happy ending. It’s great.

Most simply, this book was a nice little moment of escapism and one that is not so far-fetched as to really hurt you when you come crashing back down from chick lit land. Ms. Uviller’s writing style is utterly fantastic: intelligent without seeming pretentious (although, as a Yale graduate, she would have every right to be so), funny without hitting you over the head with the punchline and wonderfully real-feeling, even in its moments of greatest unreality. Zephyr honestly comes to life, as do the people she encounters along the way. I have absolutely no idea what other genre Zephyr might have more happily fit into (although judging by her preoccupation with romantic fantasies of the mind perhaps chick lit is the right place for her), but it might have been nice for Ms. Uviller to try out her debut writing chops on something equally shiny, equally nicely written but perhaps slightly more substantive.

Note: I actually wrote this review some weeks ago since I was beneficently given a review copy and, since then, I have slightly revised my thoughts on the book. This book stuck with me a surprisingly long time and I still find myself thinking about it sometimes, weeks later. While no one is going to confuse Super in the City with high literature, I must say this was a good, thoroughly likable book. Please do read it in your spare hours! It goes quickly and is quite an “upper.”