Title: Not great.
Review: I had some hopes for Whitney Otto's "A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity". I found it less charming than "How To Make an American Quilt," and I found "Quilt" to be faintly charming, at best.Set in the 1980s, in San Francisco, Otto could have made some real statements about chosen families. She does not.Her characters are all educated, struggling to affluent, and many of them are pretentious as anything. Casual references to architects, designer clothing and furniture- it is as much a catalogue as a novel. Most of the chracters are in their late 20s, early 30s, making them my contemporaries. Instead of doing something, many of them are merely content to see and be seen, on the fringes of San Francisco's art scene.Otto does not mention AIDS.A better take on similar material is the New York centered "Story of My Life," by Jay McInerny...
Is this product review negative?