My Very '90s Romance

November 12, 2001
Riding goofy, self-deprecating Bridget Jones's coattails in this second novel by the British author of Amanda's Wedding
is a clumsy 28-year-old florist named Holly Livingstone, who desperately needs a sympathetic London flatmate. While most women always pick the wrong men, Holly assures us that she picks the wrong places to live. Since she makes barely more than the minimum wage—when most of her fellow college grads are concerned with mortgages—Holly's apartment prospects are limited to dubious arrangements such as the "Turkish Lesbian Women's Collective" until Josh, a former college classmate of indeterminate sexual orientation, takes pity on her. Josh lives in a rundown old house in Pimlico with posh, business-studies Kate and a rarely seen—or heard from—computer nerd named Addison Farthing. Once Holly gets one look at Addison, however (by barging into his room, which is equipped like the Star Trek Enterprise), she begins spinning fantasies of perpetual geek bliss. What it lacks in plot, Colgan's spirited, eye-rolling romp tries hard to make up for in characterization—of Holly's idiosyncratic flatmates Josh and Kate, her working-class florist acquaintances (including one tough chick who beats her up), various unpromising young men who will never go for her (but sometimes do) and ungainly, unsociable Addison himself. Colgan keeps the dialogue skipping along with tongue-in-cheek, exclamatory asides such as "Poo!" and "Had I let a four-year-old do the shopping?" In the end, it's Holly who has to carry this serviceably silly novel. She is snake-tongued, unambitious, rude a lot of the time, but she'd be almost likable if she didn't sound so familiar. Though the field is dangerously close to being glutted, American readers may fall for this desperate-to-be-liked, lowest-common-denominator girlfriend.