The Millennium Girl

Riffing off of both The Rules and the slew of new single-girl manhunt novels, Felske's (The Word) third novel scales new heights of stylized, parodic misogyny and shallowness, aiming to describe the art of gold-digging women and the folly of their prey: wealthy, high-living ""walletmen."" Bodicea Langley, hailing from a small factory town in Ohio, relocates to New York to pursue a career as a Digger, a woman who lives off well-heeled lovers, hoping to lure one into marriage. Her perfect body, nauseatingly if satirically described, provides the bait. After dumping two-timing multimillionaire Giles, Bo decides to marry Napoleon, a gay friend who can access his family's considerable fortune if he weds. But while visiting Napoleon's family in Palm Beach, Bo takes up with Bradley Lorne-August, a designer-logo-dripping GQ clich . Bradley's attentions wane and Bo resumes with former lover Warren Samuels, America's 11th-richest man--whose tastes run to sex in airplanes, religious role playing and sadism. During the Aspen leg of her Digger Tour, Bo falls for a young journalist and keeps tabs on her ailing sister and niece, both living in poverty back in Ohio. Predictably, Bo realizes that all that glitters is not gold and decides to become independent, but her leap into self-sufficiency has as much substance as a champagne buzz. Sometimes clever, Bo invents cute nicknames for her fellow Diggers: ""Travels With Men"" and ""Operation: I Do."" However, Bo's trite discovery that wealth isn't love is unrelieved by the dangerously uneven prose, as clumsy sex scenes mix with meandering lessons for Digger survival. Awkward phrasings--""Don't depend. Independ""--fail as jokes but point up this comic failure with perky insistence. The acidic jibes at upper-class hypocrisy are good for a few chuckles, but the novel's stabs at satiric revelations drown in the shallows of Felske's limited vision and tiresome subject. (Oct.)