The Autobiography of Vivian
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Meet Vivian . . .
A small-town girl who conquers the Big City on her own terms . . . a sucker for happy endings with an attraction to all things fattening—and a personality that oddly gets her in (and out of) trouble at lightning speed. This is her story . . . and perhaps a little of yours, too.
True, Vivian Livingston has the gig of a lifetime, starring 24/7 as the heroine of www.Vivianlives.com, a kind of “girls rule” Web site. But it wasn’t always that way. So rewind, back to the traditionally traumatic last semester of college, when Vivian, feeling the need for drastic change, randomly enters a songwriting contest and, to everyone’s surprise, actually wins. The prize—an incredible weekend getaway to the capital of the universe: New York City.
One amazing weekend getaway later, without a real “life” plan and weeks away from graduation, she and her best friend Sophie make the obvious decision . . . NYC here we come! But the moment Vivian and Sophie set foot in their new apartment—a raw, hand-me-down, fourth-floor walk-up studio—they know that life in the Big Apple is going to be anything but easy. Lacking both dough and direction, Vivian has a rough time with the transition. Even worse, Sophie seems to have found a soul mate—and has left Vivian behind. But Vivian is determined to make her world work, despite a few challenging bumps in the road. Rather than ship out, things begin to shape up, as Vivian not only gets the (virtual) keys to the city, but most important, discovers the keys to her own heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This is less a novel than an extension of Krantz's popular Web site, Vivianlives.com, where interested parties can tour the virtual 20-something's apartment, learn about hip careers (life coach, e-commerce queen), get beauty tips and read her daily journal, which exhorts readers to "do something special!!!" such as buying the products linked to almost every page. Our heroine is a remarkably shallow Pennsylvania girl who wins a songwriting contest and moves to New York, best friend Sophie in tow, and discovers firsthand the struggles of blazing her own path and finding true love. Bouncing from a gig in a Village cafe to an entry-level dream job at VH1, Vivian juggles no-good men, the demands of friendship, her dog, celebrity sightings, trendy clubs and cute outfits. Krantz is, like, totally into sarcasm, parenthetical asides, multiple exclamation points "Yeah baby!!! (So scary!)" and smiley faces, making Vivian sound more like a teenage mall rat than a college graduate. Reading her is the literary equivalent of being lashed to a chair in a coffee shop next to someone who is braying her life story into a cell phone. But online fans who can't get enough of Ms. Livingston's trenchant musings on everything from Madonna to Friends, handbags to hotties, may find this enjoyable.