The narrator will go through several roller-coaster romances, learning the hard way ''that a broken heart is a broken heart no matter who designed the guest bedroom you are having it in.'' But the story line doesn't ask to be taken seriously, except in the remote ways it channels ''The Forsyte Saga'' or Jane Austen. ''Is that why you're crying like a Balenciaga bag that lost its buckle?'' Julie asks the novel's nameless - and at that moment boyfriendless - narrator. Sykes has a distinctive, wily and well-deployed comic voice. For all the book's noxious insistence that Champagne and diamonds make the world go round, Ms.
Whatever else New York sample sales may be, they are not ''so fraught with danger they make the Gaza Strip look peaceful.'' But by and large she keeps the escapism aloft. Sykes crosses over to the stupid side in those ill-advised moments when she allows real life to intrude on fabulousness.
''Bergdorf Blondes'' brings to mind the wise men of Spinal Tap and their deathless dictum: it's a fine line between stupid and clever. Sykes somehow manages to treat this as satire while also playing it nearly straight in a book that boasts as many flagrant product plugs (Michael Kors, anyone?) as it does funny one-liners. Into the blender go Bridget Jones, Anita Loos, ''Sex and the City'' and ''Clueless'' out comes a diabolically amusing concoction. (''I know exactly where the pastel quilts are going to be located: at the far end of the ballroom behind the size thirty-eight cashmere twin sets.'') One member of the group, Mimi, who received the full Beatrix Potter collection at her baby shower, ''totally freaked because it was more books than she'd ever read.''īut the real-life counterparts of these characters and quite a few fun-loving others are liable to enjoy the brain candy that is Ms. After all, this is a crowd that finds no reading more essential than the bootlegged floor plan to the Chanel sample sale. Sykes's rich, style-obsessed sylphs face. How indeed: such are the dilemmas that Ms. ''How are we going to discuss what it's like for six men to survive on the blood of one tortoise while we're all sipping Sea Breezes?'' Julie wonders. And the party planner can arrange an aquatic motif (''Coral! Driftwood!'') to suit the book of choice, Nathaniel Philbrick's ''In the Heart of the Sea.'' Unfortunately this is not really festive reading. The meal can come from Elaine's (''would that be literary enough food for you?''). The ''girls'' in Plum Sykes's ''Bergdorf Blondes'' can arrange to have a book-themed dinner party. ''Can you teach us about literature, and books?'' professor'' who, she hopes, will organize a reading group for shopaholic socialites.
''I'm loving that you don't know who Michael Kors is!'' says Julie Bergdorf to the ''really cute brain-box N.Y.U.
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