This "specialist" in movies floats through hectic life in New York with living arrangement and men issues.

This book gets off to a very slow start. During the first half of the story, there is almost no character development leaving the reader wondering why they should bother to continue. The author has made such an effort at tying in various unknown classic movies to the plot that there are pages in the book where you feel like all your doing is reading vague references to movies you've never heard of nor do you ever intend to watch. The classic movie references actually made the book less enjoyable. Particularly because of the fact that none of the movies mentioned were very recognizable, yet in order to understand the tie between the scene in the book with the movie you would have had to have watched the movie. The second half of the book actually does pick up a bit. The reader actually gets to know some of the characters (there are far too many characters in this book, most of which make no real contribution to the plot). In the first hundred pages or so the movie references are non-stop. However in the second half of the book, there are very few movie references, which makes it much easier to read. Even with the development of the main characters, it is almost impossible to relate to any of them because they are still so one demensional. A woman obsessed with movies, a man obsessed with the Cuban revolution, a couple of old actresses obsessed with themselves. Very few of the characters in the book are believable as real people. The main character of the book does end up having an affair with a very unexpected individual which is mostly what makes the second half of the book interesting. But even though this was definitely not the best book I've read in the last year (doesn't even make top ten) I still think that it has the potential to spark a lot of conversation and debate amongst book clubs, so it may still be a worth while read.

I selected this book thinking it would be fun and light hearted for our club to read. It never made it there for our group of 35 to 40 year olds. We were all so disappointed on so many levels.