Elegance

By Kathleen Tessaro

Louise is a woman from Pennsylvania who is married and living in London, England. She finally admits to herself that her marriage is not working out, probably because her husband is a homosexual. One day she finds a book in a used book store titled Elegance by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux. Written in the 1960s, the author gives advice on how to be an elegant woman and Louise decides that the advice is just what she needs to get her life back on track. Turns out that the advice is exactly what she needs, even though she ignores it most of the time, because every time she screws up, she goes back to the book and discovers that the author was totally correct in her advice.

Anyway the book is about a woman trying to get herself together after her marriage falls apart. It was the typical chick lit story. Not especially interesting or compelling and pretty predictable, following the usual course of screwing up, dating the wrong guys, doing the wrong things, working for the wrong place, drinking too much and eventually landing a better job and a better boyfriend but, of course, learning to be her own woman. The usual routine. About the only thing that was really interesting in the story was the advice book which was based on a real book of the same title and author as in the story. Probably would be more interesting reading that book than this chick lit version of it.