The Boyfriend School

Rating:
Summary: Really, really memorable. Really, really modern Texas
Review: I read this book years ago and still remember it. Bird writes discriptions of urban Texas . . . especially Texas summer nights. . . that are so true to life. I live in Texas and have been on the back of a motorcycle riding through a late night urban landscape (Dallas to be precise) when the sprinkles come on. Bird got the feel of the scene exactly right. The characters of her story are just as authentic aand the story is FUN. Like I said I read this one years ago and still remember it. I'm planning on rereading it soon - like tomorrow!

Rating:
Summary: cute with a good personality
Review: I read this on recommendation from a reviewer of Olivia Goldsmith's Bad Boy, who claimed that Bad Boy was just a regurgitation of Sarah Bird's book. Now that I've read both, I must agree that The Boyfriend School is the superior book. I thought that the beginning was somewhat sluggish and Gretchen's "special friend" incredibly irritating (overblown and undergroomed). However, after the plot gained speed and the special friend faded out, I was drawn into Bird's quirky characters and Gretchen's angst about her true romantic nature. This is a really charming book that shouldn't be out of print when so many Bridget Jones copy-cats are littering the shelves. And coincidentally, I didn't think that Bad Boy shares much more than a plot device with The Boyfriend School.

Rating:
Summary: cute with a good personality
Review: I read this on recommendation from a reviewer of Olivia Goldsmith's Bad Boy, who claimed that Bad Boy was just a regurgitation of Sarah Bird's book. Now that I've read both, I must agree that The Boyfriend School is the superior book. I thought that the beginning was somewhat sluggish and Gretchen's "special friend" incredibly irritating (overblown and undergroomed). However, after the plot gained speed and the special friend faded out, I was drawn into Bird's quirky characters and Gretchen's angst about her true romantic nature. This is a really charming book that shouldn't be out of print when so many Bridget Jones copy-cats are littering the shelves. And coincidentally, I didn't think that Bad Boy shares much more than a plot device with The Boyfriend School.

Rating:
Summary: I think I picked this up ten years ago ...
Review: I still remember the staggering shock I felt as this book unleashed its big surprise twist. I shook my head and blinked my eyes and re-read the paragraph just to make sure. I never saw it coming.

I remember raving about the book, which I appreciated not only for its humor and surprise but its ultimate lessons of love and acceptance. If you can find this wonderful story in a remainder bin somewhere, pick it up! You'll still be remembering it ten years from now.

Rating:
Summary: One of my all-time favorites...and I read voraciously.
Review: I, too, first read this as an excerpt in Cosmopolitan years ago, and rushed right out to find it - it has become my favorite "light reading" book of all time and I have read it so often that I've memorized much of it. I recommend it for any woman who is or ever was a mid-twenty-something single, because it perfectly captures the essence of life in that phase - frustrated with men and career but unwilling to give up on one's dreams of a real job, a real guy, and a real life. I still laugh out loud when I read it and I still carry a lot of Gretchen inside me. How could Sarah Bird know me so darn well?! A real "girlfriend" book. Too bad Oprah wasn't doing her book club when this came out.

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Summary: A quirky little tale - this is a Chick Book with a capital C
Review: Not knowing what to expect, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Sarah Bird had managed to capture the essence of what it's like to be a single female who is happy to be alone but secretly wishes for gut-wrenching passion and romance. From the opening line, I was completely amused. You've got to love a book that combines a romance writers' convention, a philandering guy named "the Trout" and a left-leaning independent newspaper all in the same paragraph. This book is a must-read for any female who has given up on the male species

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Summary: Loved the characters, speech, setting, almost everything.
Review: Okay, maybe the second half, after she discovered Rye, wasn't my favorite part. I really liked the beginning, when she's describing life at her magazine and at home, LOVED the Luvboree, Juanita, Carrie, Lizzie, and Andrea. Enjoyed excerpts from Gretchens book and from others. What I didn't like about the part with Rye was that it seemed like she didn't spend as much time with Juanita and Lizzy, and when the three of them were together was the funniest part in the whole book. However, the climax is interesting and unexpected, and I loved all the characters, the humor, and the setting. God, if I met someone like Rye I wouldn't care how many Trouts I had to go through to get to to him. Gus Kubiak is sweet. I know some people think that Gretchen is shallow about him, but you have to think, the author was trying to be realistic. Not a lot of women would be phycologically capable of looking past that face and that much earnestness(desperation).

Rating:
Summary: Smart, funny, romantic
Review: One of my very favorite books. For years, it was out of print. I never could understand why. Recently I was delighted to see a new edition in a bookstore. A whole new group of readers can discover Sarah Bird's wonderful characters, snappy dialogue, humor, romance and original plot.

Her main character, Gretchen, works for a second-rate and declining publication as a writer\photographer. She's assigned to cover a convention of romance novelists. Initially very snobbish about this kind of writing, she's won over by the intelligence of the writers she meets. Some of them become her friends. One friend, Lizzie, is a particularly unforgettable character, an intellectual with college degrees in arcane academia from an intellectual family with a supersmart husband and brother, a take-charge manner, and bizarre child-raising ideas. She's also a major star in the romance novelist galaxy. Another, Juanita, is earthy, nosy and nurturing.

Gretchen's new friends encourage her to try to write a romance novel herself. We see her struggles with creating hero and heroine, plot devices and language, failing to "transcend the genre," and surviving on Cup-a-Noodles. Along the way, she copes with her philandering sometimes-boyfriend boss, dodges attempts by her new friends to match-make, and by her landlord to collect the rent, copes with writer's block, learns the conventions of the romance novel, has a storybook adventure, solves a mystery, has an exotic romance herself, and learns how to write a love scene that soars, and sells.

While her heroine has to learn to create within the limits of the romance novel format, Ms. Bird goes far beyond it. The Boyfriend School has intelligent and funny observations to make about writers and writing in general, and about the romance novel genre in particular, about being a very smart person in pretty dumb job, about being single with an on-again off-again boyfriend, about family, friendship, health and happiness, eccentric intellectuals, romance, and love. While on one level, it seems like the book is just a clever, good-natured, romantic romp, it's also about people and things not being what you expect, about discovering what really matters in life and other people, and about being surprised by ourselves and by life. It's done with such a light touch and great style that it may not occur to you that there were some serious issues involved until you're done.

A word about the book and the movie. I read the book first and then saw the movie "Don't Tell Her It's Me" starring Jamie Gertz, Steve Guttenberg, and Shelly Long. I was disappointed in the movie and thought they should have followed the book more closely. The book is told in the first person by the struggling writer, and the effect is critical to the main plot surprise. The movie is made from a completely different point of view, which appears in a diary late in the book. The movie not only loses the main plot twist, but, more importantly, all of Gretchen's wonderful thoughts and observations. And a visual medium can't match all the witty language in the book. Sometime after that, I read an interview with Ms. Bird where she said that she wrote the script for the movie first - basically the diary at the end of the book. Later she wrote a book around that plot device. Along the way she changed the point of view to a first person narrative with Gretchen as the main character. The change is magical. While the movie is standard romantic fare, the book is a treasure.

I've lent this book to several friends and had to fight to get it back. They were charmed. It's not only a delightful read; it's a delightful re-read.

My highest recommendation. Five stars can't do it justice. Don't miss it.

Rating:
Summary: See the movie based on this book!
Review: This novel, "The Boyfriend School," by Sarah Bird, became a movie which was shown on basic cable for years under the title "Don't Tell Her It's Me" and later the exact same movie was shown under the title "The Boyfriend School." It is such a unique and funny movie, that makes fun of women who say they don't mind what a man looks like as long as he is a good person.

Rating:
Summary: Keeps you laughing and restores your faith in true love!
Review: What more could you ask for!?!? This light, amusing tale alternately pokes fun at romance novels AND has you believing in them! The ULTIMATE read for any smart, single woman navigating dating, careers, and a cast of well-meaning friends constantly trying to set you up with Mr. Right. You'll be rooting for the lead character Gretchen, a twenty-something photo-journalist trying to carve out a career AND a relationship at a small Texas newspaper. An assignment to cover a romance novelists convention starts as a target for her sarcasm and cynical feelings about the myth of true love. What it leads to is a delicious string of events that includes one simple, plain, kind of nerdy nice guy, and one sexy, exotic motorcycle-riding god! The result has Gretchen considering that perhaps, maybe, just this once, it really is possible to get the happily-ever-after ending. More than once you'll probably muse that this book reads like your own diary of failed attempts at love --except they read as a lot more charming in "The Boyfriend School!" But the book and its characters' stories are more than fluff. The feelings and actions displayed by Gretchen as she meets and mingles with romance novelists, philandering boyfriends, and one Truly Nice Guy are so real and engaging and thought-provoking that you'll end up considering your own dating life in a new light. "The Boyfriend School" is an absolute must-read for women who want to keep their sense of humor in the face of yet another bad date. I've given copies of this book to so many women friends that certain catch-phrases in the book have become part of our shared secret lingo! It's a winner!