cover image I Want Those Shoes!

I Want Those Shoes!

Paola Jacobbi. Scribner Book Company, $18 (135pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-7774-7

In this collection of brief essays, journalist Jacobbi misses by at least two seasons the ""One can never have too many shoes!"" era roughly bracketed by Imelda Marcos on one end and the finale of television's Sex in the City on the other. Passing up the opportunity to examine that phenomenon, or to document the history of women's footwear, Jacobi instead focuses on familiar observations and glib, sitcom-ready aphorisms: ""In the end that's what shoes are: our best friends."" Jacobbi considers a dozen types of women's shoes with writing that's not only shallow and uninformative, but strange and occasionally indecipherable: ""Usually the collector of ankle boots looks down on the 'shoe' shoe, the 'skirt' skirt and the woman who dresses too much like a woman."" Those who spent the last 15 years barefoot will be interested to find out that ""music, in particular hip-hop culture, has launched and continues to launch ever newer and hipper models of athletic shoes""; similarly, long-divorced Nicole Kidman is reported, more than once, to be happier in heels than she was in her marriage to diminutive first husband Tom Cruise. Even Jacobbi's rules for ""Happy Feet"" are antiquities; aside from Sujean Rim's lovely illustrations, footwearphiles will find most of this shoe-gazing material old hat.