Going up?

Blythe Young is on the lam from the IRS, numerous creditors, and a vindictive Austin socialite named Kippie Lee. After a rags-to-riches marriage unravels, Blythe seeks refuge with Millie, her former roommate who is still living in the Seneca House co-op they inhabited in college. Millie, now an un-ordained minister, spends her days feeding the homeless, the unemployed day laborers, and teen runaways that panhandle on the Drag.

No longer able to rely on the drugs and alcohol she needs to get through her day as a bankrupt extreme events coordinator, Blythe turns to her far worse habit of manipulation. After alienating Millie by forcing a love confession from her already-spoken-for-in-an-arranged-marriage-sort-of-way crush Sanjeev, Blythe is kicked out of the house. Blythe, and the novel, finally finds her groove when she successfully coordinates a last-minute retreat for Kippie Lee’s gang at the Seneca “Spa.”

Sometimes silly, sometimes trite, sometimes funny, sometimes not, How Perfect is That by Sarah Bird isn’t. What it is, however, is entertaining. Like its characters, the novel is over-the-top at every possible moment. In it you’ll find at least one characterization of every person you’ve ever met living in Austin from the Whole Foods bagger/bassist to the Westlake malpractice lawyer who hires Lyle Lovett to entertain at parties.

With reading, “sometimes you get the elevator, sometimes you get the shaft” (to borrow a line from the novel). But Bird’s writing, as evidenced in her other books I’ve read (The Mommy Club and The Flamenco Academy), never fails to give you a lift.

Find Bird's writing for Texas Monthly here.