Jacobean Drama

LAURA JACOBS'S WOMEN ABOUT TOWN SHOWS MOXIE

Women are too complicated, caught in limbo between a rich poeticized past and the meaningless postmodern moment," writes Vanity Fair contributing editor Laura Jacobs in another of her roles, dance critic for The New Criterion. Though she was describing the feminine component of Twyla Tharp'sThe Elements, she could have also been crystallizing her thoughts for her upcoming novel, Women About Town (Viking). Indeed, it is the kind of line one of the book's two main characters, Lana Burton, could have written in her own job—she is a cultural critic, and Jacobs entertains the reader with Burton's graceful navigation of New York City's treacherous publishing terrain. Iris Biddle, the book's other female lead, is on a parallel artistic path, as a lampshade couturiere. Each of these women is also on a romantic search, and Jacobs lyrically records their failings in love as well as their ultimate successes. Women About Town is elegant and witty and charming, much like its protagonists (damsels on their way to damehood), who have talent and style and that most winning Manhattan characteristic: moxie. Laura Jacobs is our new Dawn Powell, but with a more generous heart,

KEVIN SESSUMS

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