Girls' Poker Night » (Reprint)

Jill A. Davis was a writer for Late Show with David Letterman, where she received five Emmy nominations. She has also written several network pilots, screenplays, and short stories. Before moving to New York City, she wrote a humor column for a small metropolitan newspaper.

Dissatisfied both with writing a Single Girl on the Edge/ Ledge/Verge lifestyle column and with her boyfriend (who has a name for his car and compulsively collects plastic bread ties), Ruby Capote sends her best columns and a six-pack of beer to the editor of The New York News and lands herself a new job in a new city.

Publishers Weekly

When journalist Ruby Capote decides to flee boring Boston for the bright lights and hopefully more exciting world of New York City, she discovers love is still the same challenge it was in Bean Town. By turns endearing, funny and downright irritating, Capote ends one relationship with the annoying but handsome Doug and begins another with her editor boss Michael, all the while mulling things over with her circle of female poker pals. Rather like refugees from a bargain basement Sex and the City, the friends provide shaky support as Capote continues to search for meaning and happiness, both in her humor columns and in reality. Navigating the perilous waters of workplace romance, Capote wisecracks her way through until she discovers that she must deal with some real and poignant issues. Davis, herself an erstwhile newspaper columnist (and a writer for David Letterman), paints the newsroom universe and its inhabitants with colorful irony, while exuding empathy for single career women everywhere. Constructed of breezy chapters that often read like surreal "Lifestyle" columns, the trump card of this slim volume is its blend of humor and rueful sadness. The brittle Capote always has her guard up; she is quick with a quip and ready to run at a moment's notice the instant life gets serious. This amusing though somewhat dialogue-heavy first novel won't reveal the secrets of winning at poker, but it does teach an attentive reader that dealing from the bottom of the deck doesn't work. "You set yourself up for happiness or you set yourself up for sadness. Either way, it's your doing," notes Capote's therapist in an Ally McBeal-esque segment. Or in cardspeak: if you don't keep shuffling and playing, you'll never know when you'll have a winning hand. Deal. (Feb. 19) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.