title: Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless
author:  Susan Jane Gilman 
description: Gilman's memoir of growing up on Manhattan's <i>upper</i> Upper West Side in the '70s starts slowly but gathers momentum. Readers who find themselves drifting during Gilman's reveries on lying during show-and-tell will find themselves pleasantly riveted by the time she's getting in touch with her roots as a reporter for the <i>Jewish Week</i>. Gilman, author of 2001's <i>Kiss My Tiara</i>, a women's self-help guide, makes common scenarios fresh with humor and wry social commentary; on the first day of school, she quickly learns "boys might be fighters, but girls could be terrorists." Gilman's ear for dialogue is dead-on. When her brother asks their dad why their Jewish family celebrates Christmas, she doesn't miss a beat: " 'Because your grandmother's a Communist and your mother loves parties,' said my father. 'Now eat your supper.' " These one-liners don't detract, however, from a serious and moving look at one family's efforts to keep itself intact through divorce and other life challenges. After her parents separate, Gilman, then in her mid-20s, fears she and her brother had spent their childhoods in happy oblivion while their parents were "spellbound with misery." Probably not: Gilman's recollections of moving bumpily toward adulthood are keenly observant. She's nicely made the leap from self-help to narrative nonfiction. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  NOBLEMEN WITH BAD INTENTIONS
  
  Looking into her reflection, she managed to settle two fabric butterflies back
  into her hair and wrap the dangling threads of a third around some seed pearls
  in the flowers at her shoulder. She must have groaned aloud, because her
  fashion critic laughed. When she looked up, he stood nearby with a gold
  stickpin in hand.
  
  “Try this.” His grin raised both hackles and gooseflesh.
  
  She watched in disbelief as he pulled out the fabric of her bodice, jabbed the
  pin through a flower, and threaded it through from behind.
  
  She should be kicking him like a Missouri mule, should be giving him a painful
  lesson in how American girls dealt with “bounders.” But, truth be told—tall,
  dark men with bad intentions had always been her weakness, and he was taller
  and darker than most, and from what she could tell, his intentions were
  spectacularly bad.
  
  “There,” he said with a wry smile, lowering his hand. “If you can overlook the
  fact that those two appear