Diane Vadino’s secret nerd heart
By SHARON STEEL | November 13, 2007
CONFIDENTIAL: Vadino transcends the categorizations that have become every young coming-of-age writer’s worst nightmare. |
| Smart Girls Like Me | By Diane Vadino | Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s | 272 pages | $23.95 |
Many people will pre-judge Betsy Nilssen — the heroine of Diane Vadino’s debut, Smart Girls Like Me — as another Bridget Jones or Andy Sachs, and that’s a shame. Even though Smart Girls’ lip-glossed-Splenda jacket appeals to the sort of tirelessly stylish girls scrutinizing the production schedule of the Sex & the City movie, Betsy herself would prefer X-Files reruns to Sarah Jessica Parker sightings. Nevertheless, Smart Girls is going to be called chick lit. It might even be denounced as “trick lit,” a new, similarly pejorative term that author/blogger Seth Godin coined to describe chick lit masquerading as something more meaningful. It’s true that Smart Girls stars a messy, irreverent New Yorker who works in fashion and is clever, confused, and alone, and this is indeed a satire about almost-boyfriends and urban isolation. Some might consider these choices limiting, but Vadino has merely found them inspiring. Which is why Smart Girls transcends the de facto genre categorizations that have become every young coming-of-age writer’s worst nightmare.A 24-year-old assistant editor at a fashion dot-com, Betsy’s a lovely, muddled contradiction — neurotic enough to refuse getting into the shower with a guy she’s obsessed with yet comfortable conducting intelligent interviews while drunk. She’s also a victim of the early disillusionment that cloned itself through post-collegiates at the cusp of the millennium, during which Vadino deftly sets the scene here. Betsy is preparing for several things at once: the end of the world, a quarter-life crisis, and the loss of her steely, alluring best friend, Bridget — who is about to be married. Bridget has a “secret nerd heart” that beats in synch with Betsy’s. This is where their bond lives.
Vadino could have turned this connection into the hollow shells and bones of friendship. Instead, she weaves through their interactions — and the spaces between them — with an organic sensitivity. We already understand what they mean to each other, and how much they love each other. Betsy’s unadorned narrative channels all of this: “There is a moment of silence before I hear the dead air. Bridget has hung up on me. If anyone else had done that, I would have been annoyed, put out, but with Bridget it is just part of what we do: There is an indescribable grace in being allowed to be your own worst self with someone, completely unedited, and it is something I would not trade for the world, for Ryan even, for anything.”
Betsy doesn’t pledge these feelings to Ryan, her crush/current fixation. He tempts Betsy, and she kisses and then hops into bed with him. “I am hoping this is not becoming the push-pull of the Girl Who Is Trapped in Her Head and the Boy Who Loves to Fuck,” she muses. For a time, she loses herself to the disorienting sadness that makes their relationship the only Armageddon she’s forced to survive.
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Sweet reads, The Devil Wears Prada, Dirty politics, More 
- Sweet reads
Here, listed alphabetically by author, are 10 of the best works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry the Phoenix wrote about in 2007.
- The Devil Wears Prada
If Lauren Weisberger’s bestseller was a Starbucks espresso — overall bland, but hot and quick — then David Frankel’s adaptation is the decaf version. Watch the trailer for The Devil Wears Prada (QuickTime)
- Dirty politics
For two years as Wonkette, Ana Marie Cox was best known for gleeful daily references to "ass-fucking" and political tawdriness in the blogosphere.
- Field guide to Facebook
Recently, CNN ran a short piece listing common Facebook personas. CNN ? After our collective jaws dropped, we asked the rhetorical question, "How instructive is the funeral-parlor-stopover of undead zombies like Lou Dobbs and Larry King going to be to the Facebookers of today?"
- Bunny girl
A film about one of the world’s bestselling children’s books and the ballsy British woman behind it marks the stirring return of Babe director Chris Noonan. Watch the trailer for Miss Potter (QuickTime)
- Seeing isn’t believing
Public radio has a number of gritty survival skills. One of these is the ability to fly under the pop-culture radar like an ambiguously cool former classmate.
- Blown dry
When Lauren Conrad is blow-drying her hair before her camera crews arrive, does she ever consider giving up and allowing her tresses to frizz into a rat’s nest?
- Tween troubles
Poor Kelly Clarkson.
- Faking it
if you were Whitney Port, the colt-legged, honey-haired, cow-eyed star of The City , you might not think that what Herman Rosenblat did was so terrible.
- Tracking points
During the Bosnian War, Bon Savants frontman Thomas Moran used to divide his time between German punk shows and squadron airlifts. The Bon Savants, "Why This Could Never Work" (mp3)
- Where’s Lindsay?
Dina Lohan and her 14-year-old daughter, Ali, made the rounds on the talk-show circuit last week to promote their new reality series, Living Lohan .
- Less
Topics:
Books
, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bridget Jones, Diane Vadino, More
, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bridget Jones, Diane Vadino, Betsy Nilssen, Andy Sachs, Less
