Days of wine and roses
Single girls living large in Southern California
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
I’m not a person who generally reads chick lit. Like a lot of middleaged men, I tend to gravitate toward biographies of WWII generals, pulp detective stories and spy novels. But I have watched and enjoyed all six seasons of “Sex and the City” and watched and enjoyed one of the movies, and watched and hated the second. So while I don’t personally have a stake in stories about sexy, funny career girls who manage to find love and acceptance along the way, I have visited that territory enough to know how it goes.
Kim Gruenenfelder’s “Love the Wine You’re With” is her fifth novel in that vein, after titles such as “A Total Waste of Makeup” and “Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink.”
This time around, three Los Angeles career women — an actress, a TV producer and an accountant — all decide to chuck everything and open up a wine bar in Echo Park, a neighborhood east of the city.
Each of the girls (is it OK to call them that?) is also trying to get past some issue — TV producer Nat is attempting to break off an affair with the devastatingly handsome British game show host she works for, successful accountant Jessie is saddled with a nice — but boring — man who can’t commit, and actress Holly is getting to that point in Hollywood where commercial work is looking more and more like the destination rather than a steppingstone to “bigger things.”
Each character takes turns telling parts of the story in tag-team fashion.
Along with the wine bar come men, including an Italian wine rep with gorgeous hair, a Porsche and a great sense of humor; a sexy neighbor named Sven (from Sweden) and charming TV director Joe.
The men are all much better looking, more successful and far more adept at witty banter and insightful commentary than any guy I know, but this is escape fiction. Who wants to read a book about women who meet men who like to nap on the couch and wake up with tortilla chips on their bellies?
In between, the girls flirt in a sharp “Sex and the City” way, banter among themselves like Gilmore Girls, and provide self-deprecating narratives
Bridget Jones. There are misunderstandings, hurt feelings and makeups. There’s also a lot about wine, and not the kind that comes in a box. If this book is any guide, I cannot afford to go to wine bars in California, not even in Echo Park. All in all, as the title suggests, “Love the Wine You’re With” is an equal mix of light humor, hot romance and reflections on friendships amongwomen.
If this sounds like I might be describing a cable comedy show, that’s probably not a coincidence. Ms. Gruenenfelder has a background in the industry, having been a screenwriter, a playwright, and was also a writer for the television show “Jeopardy!”
To double check my radar on these things — it’s the first book I’ve read in a long time where nobody gets shot — I asked a younger woman at work, who actually reads chick lit, to take a look and give the female perspective.
Her verdict? A good summer getaway, like listening to a playlist of favorite pop songs. The characters are relatable, and while it’s an unrealistic world, “Love the Wine You’re With” speaks to the fantasy of being a successful single girl with your toughest choice being which hot guy you want to end up with.
It is, as my co-worker said, a light, refreshing summer cocktail of a book. Or maybe like a good glass of wine while on vacation in Southern California.
“Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28), Ms.Gidla’s unemotional account of her familyopens a window into the lives of India’s most oppressed people.It is not a story told by an outsider, but a tale recounted by onewho has experienced what it means to be an untouchable in India’scomplicated caste structure.
In chronicling her family, Ms. Gidla traces her roots to the 1800s (when India was a colony of Britain) and how her ancestors, who were forest dwellers, came to be labeled as untouchables.
Educatedby Christian missionaries, Gidla’sfamily is a family of teachers yet theyfail to escape the “caste burden” placedon them. In fact, caste dictates every aspect of their lives —how they behave, where they live, what they wear and eat andwhom they marry.
The protagonist in the story is her mother Manjula and uncle Satyamurthy, a Naxal leader. Manjula, a professor, struggles to give a better life to her three children while balancing a marriage with a mercurial man. Her battles with orthodoxy, misogyny and gender equality are accepted as the way of life for a woman. Her uncle Satyamurthy, a poet and a revolutionary who champions the cause of the poor, would go on to be a towering figure in Naxal, which to this date continues to be a “security concern” for the Indian government.
For those who are ignorant about the politics of the subcontinent, the events and characters (there are many) can be a bit confusing. Some broad stroke statements about beef eating (beef in India is eaten only by the untouchables and Muslims) don’t necessarily reflect the culinary diversity of India. But it can be dismissed given that exploring the food habits of Indians is not the intent of the book.
Ms. Gidla’s family history is in many ways a history of India that few know of. The upheavals her family faces is in tandem with the turbulence experienced by the country. It is the story of a family fighting the odds, a newly independent nation at war with itself.