A Certain Age: A Novel

"It was the sort of education that a young woman might have once had simply in order to be able to make civilized conversation at dinner." A stray passage from an Edith Wharton novel? No, it's Tama Janowitz's tale of Manhattan life in the '90s, which follows a decidedly Whartonian downward spiral. Florence Collins wants a rich husband. And although she is accomplished, a good conversationalist, a snappy dresser, and stunningly beautiful, she can't seem to find one. Why? Because she lives in New York; in her early 30s, she is past her prime; and her name is legion.

Florence disastrously visits the Hamptons, goes out to a lot of expensive restaurants, and halfheartedly performs her job at an auction house, but finds her matrimonial quarry ever elusive. Janowitz tells us, "By high school she had realized that no matter what women filled their lives with, there was still no status for them apart from whoever-whatever they had married." No clue is given as to how Florence comes to this arresting conclusion, but the author chooses to make her pay for her callowness. So predictable is Janowitz's notion of moral failure that we find our once-fastidious gal smoking crack by novel's end as well as friendless and broke. What's missing here are the psychological atmospherics found in The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country. Instead, we get loving descriptions of department-store sprees: "She went to up to the men's department and spent seven hundred dollars on a black cashmere crew neck sweater--three hundred fifty dollars--two black t-shirts, fifty dollars each, a matelot shirt ... for seventy dollars and a pair of brown linen-silk blend trousers with pleats and cuffs, on sale for two hundred." This is yuppie porn--disguised as a scorching indictment of yuppie porn. Janowitz wants to have her sushi and eat it, too. --Claire Dederer