June 23, 2008, 2:42PM
A Perfect life for Sarah Bird
Yes, Texas women are funny, and this novelist proves it
By FRITZ LANHAM
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Sarah Bird is reluctant to say this, but Blythe Young — social climber, reprobate and main character in Bird's new novel — is America. "Nobody's going to read this book if I say Blythe Young is America," Bird moans. But there's no getting around it. That Blythe, she's us.
Austin Chronicle
June 6, 2008
Blythe Young, the social- climbing protagonist of Sarah Bird's new novel, has reached wit's end. For a gal who's always used her wits to climb each rung of the ladder, the realization of her plight at the start of How Perfect Is That is a real buzz kill. Sure, her Code Warrior concoction – a "proprietary blend of Red Bull, Stoli, Ativan, just the tiniest smidge of OxyContin, and one thirty-milligram, timed-release Spansule of Dexedrine" – can stave off the truth for a little while. But once she's been kicked out of the carriage house that she's squatted in since her divorce from an Austin blue blood (and with that ouster, separated from the stash she kept hidden in an ice cream container in the freezer), Blythe Young can no longer maintain the illusion which her made-up name implies. The road does not go on forever.
Bird's new novel is a valentine to Austin, the city the author calls home. Set in 2003, the story of Blythe's tribulations is grounded in physical and geographical references that instantly ring true to the Austin reader. Underlining her descriptions of the tangible, however, is Bird's cagier objective: using Blythe as a metaphor for the conscienceless profligacy of the Bush years. Blythe's catering company, Wretched Xcess, got drunk on the free-flowing money of Austin tech boom, only to crater in the wake of the Dellionaires' downturn and the divorce from her husband and his connections. Everything, after all, is connections – and in Austin society in 2003, the ultimate connection is to George and Laura.
Once cast out of Pemberton Heights society and dunned by the IRS, Blythe's trajectory leaves her parked in her company minivan outside the university co-op she had lived in as a graduate student. With nowhere lower to sink than utter vagrancy, Blythe takes up residence in her old haunt and begins her redemption – but not without her instinctive wiles and scams. Bird details her pilgrim's progress with an acute eye and ear for the lifeblood of Austin – the parvenus and old-money socialites, the old hippies and young vegans, the LUGs (lesbians until graduation) and the lobbyists. Like Blythe, Bird accomplishes it with wit – and a scorching sense of humor.
BY MARJORIE BAUMGARTEN
Publishers Weekly
How Perfect Is That
Sarah Bird. Knopf, $23.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-307-26828-0
In the latest from seasoned Texan social satirist Bird (The Flamenco Academy, etc.), Blythe Young’s recent divorce from Trey Dix has left her outside the protective bubble of Austin’s high society. As her catering business goes broke and the IRS starts to chase her down, Blythe seeks a haven at Seneca House, the housing co-op where she lived 10 years ago during college. There, she must face Millie Ott, one of many friends Blythe shucked off in a frenzy of social climbing. Once portly Millie is now slender and, as a perfect foil for Blythe, also saintly: she delivers aid to the homeless by way of a tandem recumbent bike (which Blythe names the “dorkocycle”). At Seneca House, Blythe tries to make amends with people she’s stepped on, to avoid the IRS, and to kick both a lingering drug habit and an addiction to scamming people into helping her out. She slowly starts to wins over the affection of her housemates until one of her unthinking decisions brings potential ruin on the co-op’s financial well-being. The result is a laugh-out-loud addition to Bird’s long line of estrogen-fueled dramedies. (June)
Kirkus Reviews
Bird delivers big laughs with her spot-on examination of Texas’s high falutin’ ladies; reading about Blythe’s antics is pure, wicked fun.
Booklist
Bird infuses her riches-to-rags tale with enough smart, sardonic satire and irresistibly irreverent irony to uproariously outweigh any moral misgivings.
Praise for How Perfect Is That
Friends, you've got a treat in store. A laugh-out-loud riches-to-rags tale, a novel of manners that's perfect for the 'coming to our senses' post-Bush age. How Perfect is That is a fried Twinkie of a book--crunchily witty, cream-hearted and shockingly delicious.
--Janet Fitch, Paint it Black and White Oleander.
"How Perfect Is That? Pretty damned perfect. Sarah Bird’s scathingly funny look at red state high society delivers a novel that's equal parts Edith Wharton and Nick Hornby. Hilarious.”
--Will Clarke, author of Lord Vishnu's Love Handles and "The Worthy
How Perfect Is That could well be the funniest piece of fiction I have ever read. Beware: I got up in the middle of the night to start this novel and couldn't stop reading! I really, really love this book.
Carol Flake, a founding editor of Vanity Fair, author of “Redemptorama: Culture, Politics, and the New Evangelicism,”
“Sarah Bird lifts the beating heart out of Austin's socially mad, 2003 G.W. Bush-era body politic and magically transforms it into a kind of squeaky toy that laughs a contagious laugh when squeezed.
“Read this book, and you'll believe with me that Sarah Bird is the secret heir of Dorothy Parker and the big-hearted filmmaker Jean Renoir, because this novel is a kind of American ‘Rules of the Game.’ Too true for satire, too funny for a political novel, too political to be read as a comedy of manners,
How Perfect Is That just might save the Republic. Okay, I exaggerate. But at least, like Sarah's hero Blythe Young, we might "hold on until the mimosas bloom." Or until we've finished reading How Perfect Is That. So, for the sake of civilization, read it slowly, though you won't want to put it down.”
Glenn W. Smith, author of Politics of Deceit, Rockridge Institute Senior Fellow, managed Ann Richard’s successful campaign for governor.
“What Larry McMurtry once did for the congenitally rich of Houstons River Oaks, Sarah Bird does to the liposucked, life-coached Austin parvenus who would give up their first-born for an invitation to lunch with Laura Bush.
“How Perfect Is That is laugh-out-loud satire and in my West Austin neighborhood, spot on cultural anthropology.”
Lou Dubose, editor of The Washington Spectator, former editor of The Texas Observer, and co-author with Molly Ivins of Shrub: The Short and Happy Political Life of George W. Bush and Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s America.
