Right Address Book

When flight attendant Melanie Sartomski meets and marries the fabulously rich head of a coffin empire, it would seem to be the culmination of a lovely dream. However, Melanie soon learns that it's not your fortune that counts - it's what you do with it. Melanie's Park Avenue peers, the ladies who lunch, gossip maliciously and consistently about everything Melanie does that is not in line with their fashions. To them, she's a parvenu and an arriviste, and nothing she does is going to change that. A hatchet job by a society journalist only worsens Melanie's reputation. If you've ever wondered about the habits of the idle rich, and thirsted for envy-enriching detail, this field guide to New York's most solvent and least sane will titillate you no end.

Publishers Weekly

Money can't buy style, learns the social climber protagonist of this novel. Nor can money write an interesting book. Despite their claims to an insider's view, authors Karasyov and Kargman, who met at the Upper East Side's elite Spence School, have written an achingly dull novel about a nouveau riche heroine with trailer park origins who aspires to the New York jet set. Melanie Korn, ne Sartomsky, approaches the social world of the superrich upon her marriage to billionaire Arthur Korn, who's cornered the market on caskets, funeral homes and retirement homes-but true acceptance eludes her. Although she lives with her husband at "741 Park Avenue, the most coveted building in all of New York City," the old money crowd refuses to warm to the former stewardess. Melanie kisses up to one stereotype after another, including the catty town gossips, the "grande dame of Park Avenue," her philandering husband and the beautiful heiress. As they hand McDonald's applications to the homeless, attend charity balls and angle for attention from the society papers, these Upper East Siders reveal their true lives: they shop, they lunch, they bitch. With its awkward prose, unsympathetic heroine and clich d supporting cast, this attempt at a scathing social critique doesn't measure up to its predecessors in the skewer-the-socialite genre, though undoubtedly there will be some well-heeled readers seeking to ferret out the characters' true identities. (Apr.) Forecast: Karasyov and Kargman, who grew up on the Upper East Side and wrote and produced the film Intern, will drum up publicity with an eight-city author tour plus national media attention and advertising. The tedium of the book, though, will disappoint readers looking for another Nanny Diaries. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.