MAKING SCENES

Like a boxing match, hypertext—the original format of much of this novel—demands quick, punchy prose that will keep the reader riveted between mouse clicks. Sex helps, too. But while this first print effort by veteran hypertext writer Eisen has generous helpings of both, it serves mostly as a cautionary tale about the difficulty of moving Internet-ready writing to the page. The unnamed narrator is a stunning young woman who wants to play professional beach volleyball—at least until she decides to become a model, and then a graduate student. Her succession of nonstarter relationships with variously inaccessible men is matched only by her inability to keep a job for longer than one chapter. Beset by a series of issues straight out of a glossy women's magazine—eating disorders, lack of self-esteem, the could-you-be-a-lesbian question—she moves from Chicago to Los Angeles to Boston with money donated by her parents and lovers. Despite the narrator's frenetic bed—and job—hopping, it doesn't take long to figure out that this novel isn't really going anywhere. Eisen writes short, pithy scenes anchored by clever observation; this tactic works well for attention-deprived computer readers, but when the scenes are laid end-to-end in a novel, their inherent repetitiveness is as apparent as one of the narrator's doomed relationships. Eisen can write a sex scene, that's for sure, but this narrator proves what many suspect—even sex with a beautiful woman can grow tiresome. This aspires to be a high-art Bridget Jones, but in the end it's simply an issue of Cosmo at three times the price. (Apr.)