Sometimes we read fiction not to better understand our own lives but to get a glimpse into a life beyond our own. For voyeuristic readers—especially those curious about the lives of young women in Chicago or New York—Girls in White Dresses, Jennifer Close's debut novel, will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf.

Born and raised in Chicago and a longtime resident of New York City, Close deftly pulls back the curtain on a series of dingy apartments in bustling metropolises. Inside are groups of 20-somethings who graduated from college and are now trying to figure out what's next. Marriage and/or a meaningful career may be on the horizon (or not). Regardless of what's to come, this is a group that is more than ready for something to happen. Their lives bump together over vacations or wedding weekends, and the occasional (unavoidable) catastrophe.

We watch these young women find their way through a series of tricky transitions. Love is not center stage here—although there are plenty of weddings and bridal showers, boyfriends and break-ups—nor is there a sustained look at any one character's personal transformation. Rather we observe the group navigating the whole of life itself. Though readers might long to get to know some character more fully, that isn't the point. Instead, this novel offers something perhaps finer: a portrait of a generation of women at a particular moment in time.

Three young women and their friends navigate the tricky world of big-city adulthood after graduation.

 Mary, Isabella and Lauren—the trio at the heart of this low-key coming-of-age—might not want to change the world, but they do hunger for lives more interesting than the marriage-and-babies routine that seems to have captured all their former schoolmates. Their story is told in a series of loosely connected chapters. The girls move to New York, fall for unworthy boys, find (and lose) jobs, all while attending an awful lot of weddings and bridal showers. Insecure wit Isabella comes from a big family and takes a dead-end position at a mailing-list company where she can go to work hungover, while Mary focuses on getting a law degree. Isabella and Mary share a tiny Manhattan apartment, prompting Isabella's little suburban niece to wonder aloud if Auntie Iz is poor. Party-girl Lauren works as a waitress and begins sleeping with a "dirty sexy" bartender at her restaurant, before discovering a talent for selling real estate. Mary passes the bar and gets a job at a law firm where she has to work until 9 p.m. just to keep up. And after a string of disappointments, Isabella meets Harrison (not Harry), a catch so appealing she fully expects she will screw it up during an especially challenging ski vacation. There is more, naturally, for the girls as they try to figure out who they are and what they really want, and their friendship evolves accordingly. With a light touch and utterly believable characters, Close's modestly appealing debut manages to capture the humor, heartache and cautious optimism of her protagonists.

Wryly funny sketches of life in one's 20s.

 

These girls are bridesmaids who can't quite get things right. Isabella is acing her job but nevertheless loathes it, Mary adores a guy who adores only his mother, and Lauren finds herself attracted to someone who's definitely not her type. This novel of modern-day manners from first timer Close must have impressed someone; there's a 75,000-copy first printing. Stay tuned.

Isabella, Mary, and Lauren are three friends in New York City navigating relationships, careers, early adulthood, and other people's weddings. Lauren is a real-estate agent who meets a man who could be Mr. Right—or a sociopath. Isabella is an assistant at a publishing house who suffers through a bad relationship, then meets a man who seems perfect until he asks her to move to Boston with him. Mary is a serious lawyer, married with two kids, whose husband is a perennial mama's boy incapable of grocery shopping on his own. Mixed in with the trials and tribulations of the protagonists are humorous vignettes from the lives of some of their other friends and acquaintances—many of whom are on their way to the altar or trying to find a way to get there. VERDICT This series of linked short stories is reminiscent of Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing. It is modern and funny, with original, wry observations. Close's debut novel will appeal to both fans of contemporary women's fiction with a hip vibe and readers who enjoy old-school chick lit. [See Prepub Alert, 2/14/11.]—Karen Core, Detroit P.L.

Artfully spare prose adds a literary tinge to the chick lit staples—navigating relationships, bridesmaid duties, disappointing first jobs—explored in Close's debut collection. At their weakest, the stories owe too much to their predecessors: "The Showers," in which the recurring characters travel to a suburban bridal shower, is essentially a retelling of a snappier Sex and the City episode, and Isabella's boss in "Blind" has the dark shades of The Devil Wears Prada. The standout moments come in "The Peahens," when Abby reveals her unusual family and her struggle to fit in (she "studied hard, taking notes on the silver link bracelets all the girls wore"), and the sharp "Hope," when Shannon takes a backseat to her boyfriend's naïve political passion for "the Candidate" of a presidential campaign. Occasionally funny (as when Isabella refers to her dinner dates as "parallel eating"), but without the risk taking of The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing or the deeply explored emotion of Prep, these stories will resonate with readers in the throes of the quarter-life churn who can see themselves in the cast. (Aug.)