The Boyfriend School (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
by Sarah Bird

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Book Reviews of The Boyfriend School (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Book Review: Smart, funny, romantic
Summary: 5 Stars

Her main character, Gretchen, works for a second-rate and declining publication as a writer\photographer. She's assigned to cover a convention of romance novelists. Initially very snobbish about this kind of writing, she's won over by the intelligence of the writers she meets. Some of them become her friends. One friend, Lizzie, is a particularly unforgettable character, an intellectual with college degrees in arcane academia from an intellectual family with a supersmart husband and brother, a take-charge manner, and bizarre child-raising ideas. She's also a major star in the romance novelist galaxy. Another, Juanita, is earthy, nosy and nurturing.

Gretchen's new friends encourage her to try to write a romance novel herself. We see her struggles with creating hero and heroine, plot devices and language, failing to "transcend the genre," and surviving on Cup-a-Noodles. Along the way, she copes with her philandering sometimes-boyfriend boss, dodges attempts by her new friends to match-make, and by her landlord to collect the rent, copes with writer's block, learns the conventions of the romance novel, has a storybook adventure, solves a mystery, has an exotic romance herself, and learns how to write a love scene that soars, and sells.

While her heroine has to learn to create within the limits of the romance novel format, Ms. Bird goes far beyond it. The Boyfriend School has intelligent and funny observations to make about writers and writing in general, and about the romance novel genre in particular, about being a very smart person in pretty dumb job, about being single with an on-again off-again boyfriend, about family, friendship, health and happiness, eccentric intellectuals, romance, and love. While on one level, it seems like the book is just a clever, good-natured, romantic romp, it's also about people and things not being what you expect, about discovering what really matters in life and other people, and about being surprised by ourselves and by life. It's done with such a light touch and great style that it may not occur to you that there were some serious issues involved until you're done.

A word about the book and the movie. I read the book first and then saw the movie "Don't Tell Her It's Me" starring Jamie Gertz, Steve Guttenberg, and Shelly Long. I was disappointed in the movie and thought they should have followed the book more closely. The book is told in the first person by the struggling writer, and the effect is critical to the main plot surprise. The movie is made from a completely different point of view, which appears in a diary late in the book. The movie not only loses the main plot twist, but, more importantly, all of Gretchen's wonderful thoughts and observations. And a visual medium can't match all the witty language in the book. Sometime after that, I read an interview with Ms. Bird where she said that she wrote the script for the movie first - basically the diary at the end of the book. Later she wrote a book around that plot device. Along the way she changed the point of view to a first person narrative with Gretchen as the main character. The change is magical. While the movie is standard romantic fare, the book is a treasure.

I've lent this book to several friends and had to fight to get it back. They were charmed. It's not only a delightful read; it's a delightful re-read.

My highest recommendation. Five stars can't do it justice. Don't miss it.

Summary of The Boyfriend School (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

United States Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > United States
• Teens