More satisfaction than usual in chick-lit read

Can romance survive without champagne, asks a new chick-lit novel with an alcoholic protagonist.

LUSH
Vanessa Johnson
Penguin, $28, pbk

Review by By Cushla McKinney

The opening chapters of Lush represent a bad 48 hours for Lydia Kyriacos. Dumped by her boyfriend, Marcus (seemingly taking all his belongings with him, leaving their London flat practically empty), her cat has been run over, her credit cards are maxed out and her job as an accounts manager at a big PR firm is hanging by a thread.

Much as she would like to crawl into a bottle to escape, she is beginning to wonder whether drink may be part of the problem rather than the solution.

Turning to her friends for help isn't an option - not only are they away on holiday, they party hard and expect her to party harder - and her father back home in New Zealand would only worry that she is following in her mother's footsteps.

As is so often the case, however, crisis provides an opportunity for change.

With nobody else to prop her up and forced to find solutions on her own, Lydia responds by growing up.

Avoiding situations involving social drinking as best she can, she immerses herself into her work (with gratifying results) and tentatively begins to develop new friendships as Lydia rather than Marcus-and-Lydia.

Of course, this being chick-lit, the cover asks "can romance survive without Champagne?" - every man in sight except The One (in this case Malcolm's best friend Andy) practically throw themselves at her, but this novel irritated me much less than most of its contemporaries.

Rather than giving way to tearful self-pity, Lydia finds practical and realistic strategies to resist temptation, and gets on with her life. Her growing maturity is nicely contrasted with her friend Miriam, for whom any problem can be resolved with sufficient alcohol, casual sex, or, preferably, both.

Maybe I am becoming conservative in my old age, but I found Lush a much more satisfying read than the usual 30-something chick-lit wish-fulfilment that gives this genre a bad name.

Dr McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.