Bookends

Bookends, Jane Green`s third comic novel of contemporary love and lust, proves beyond a doubt that when it comes to light reading, plot is everything. Bookends makes a great case study because it has little going for it besides plot. Dialogue? Stilted. Characters? Clichéd. Writing style? Sloppy. And yet the book is well-nigh impossible to put down. A few friends meet at university: Simon, the chirpy gay character Portia, the glamour girl Josh, the adorable, unpretentious catch and Cath, the overweight, insecure narrator. Portia strays from their crowd, but the other three remain friends into their 30s. Now successful Londoners, each faces a personal crisis: singleton Cath leaves a secure job to start a bookstore Simon looks for love.