February Read: Bitter is the New Black

Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office
by Jen Lancaster
List Price:$13.95

Summary:

This is the story of a woman trying to figure out what happens next when she's gone from six figures to unemployment checks, has applied for every imaginable job and then starts a blog.

Publishers Weekly:
"It doesn't take Lancaster long to live up to her lengthy subtitle ('Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office'): in just one chapter, she gloats over cheating a homeless man, is rude to a waitress and passes judgment on all of her co-workers (including her 'whore' best friend). She's almost gleeful about lacking 'the internal firewall that keeps us from saying almost everything we think,' but she doesn't come off as straightforward, just malicious. (Of course, it's possible she's making up much of her dialogue, which is a little too clever to be believable.) Lancaster expects sympathy for her downward slide after getting fired from her high-paying finance job in the post-9/11 recession, and chick lit fans may be entertained watching life imitate fiction, but just when you start to feel sorry for her, the snotty attitude returns. In later chapters, Lancaster increasingly relies on entries from her blog (www.jennsylvania.com) and caustic replies to criticisms, and though things start looking up — her husband finds a job, she lands a book deal — it's not clear that she's been as chastised by her experiences as she claims."

Review:

Okay, I give up! I have spent two months trying to read books that are less dark and I can't take it anymore!!! I admit it--I am a dark, dark, bleak person. The upside of this book was that everyone has been through those painful job searches where you can just not get a fucking break. It is nice to read that even bitchy prima donnas had a tough time in the job market post 9-11. (My first legal job interview was scheduled on 9-11. I didn't get it. And that is why I support the war. If I couldn't get that damn job, than we should kill thousands of Iraqis, right?)