Who has seen The Sound of Music that is, everyone will likely recognize the title of Jennifer Close's Girls in White Dresses as a certain Oscar Hammerstein lyric. But given the tone and tenor of this debut novel, it shouldn't surprise that the reference isn't particularly affectionate. About halfway through the book, the three young women whose twentysomething and early-thirtysomething adventures shape the narrative are at a friend's bridal shower, where the theme is "Favorite Things" get it?
As is often the case in Girls, the booze is flowing, and the core trio is making snaky observations. It's not just that the bride-to-be is behaving insufferably; the three principals — Isabella, Lauren and Mary — are, like many of their peers, still less than satisfied in their own personal and professional lives.
In this scenario and others, Close, who is 32, captures the extended post-collegiate ennui associated with her generation — a bit too keenly, at times. The characters are not unsympathetic. Mary, a lawyer/mom prone to Catholic guilt, and Isabella, ever-ambivalent in both her career and love life, can be quite endearing. But the various accounts of troubled beaus and hangovers can test your patience for these gals and their buddies, and make their professed desires to grow up and settle down ring hollow.
Close does provide some amusing riffs on the pop zeitgeist. We're introduced briefly to a blonde, the girlfriend of one of Isabella's boyfriends, who bears a cruelly funny resemblance to JonBenet Ramsey. Then we meet Shannon, whose budding romance is doomed when the suitor starts working non-stop for "the Candidate," an unnamed political contender whose charmed rise and overwhelming charisma clearly point to the current Oval Office occupant.
Still, for all its eager sardonicism, Girls In White Dresses ultimately proves about as revealing as brown paper packages tied up with strings and less memorable than the tune associated with them.
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