Monday, September 14, 2009

Boldface Names

We all love to kick back, relax, leave work at work (where it's supposed to be) and do just what we enjoy. That's what weekends are for. This past weekend I spent relaxing at the cottage, trying to catch up on my non-existant tan. On my way home from work on Friday, I swung by Chapters to pick up some weekend reading material. Aside from my regular dose of In Touch and US Weekly, I hit the fiction section to pick up a novel I've been eyeing since Fashion Magazine (or was it Flare?) gave it a shout out in one of their summer issues - Shinan Govani's Boldface Names.

National Post's "resident snoop, town-crier and people-watcher" has been keeping In The Scene readers on the pulse of all the whos, whats and wheres and now has penned this debut novel that Harper Collins calls "part celebrity piƱata, part scorching social satire, [...] a romp through the land of the rich, the famous and the wicked." I swallowed the novel up in less than two days. This flawlessly written page turner was full of gossip (duh), fashion, travel and all the champagne-filled parties you can handle. The story is told by Ravi, a gossip columnist, or a social archivist rather, for the National Mirror. In this novel, Ravi chronicles his experiences in the heart of the social scene. All goes well until he has a secret 'assignment' dropped on him by a clog-wearing-sweater vest-sporting individual paying Ravi a pretty penny for its execution.

So with beer and a cigarette in one hand, Boldface Names in the other, my weekend was spent basking in the sun.

I would write more on the novel but a) go read it yourself and b) I'm too busy.