The Wall Street Journal-20080202-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Books- Careless Love

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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Books: Careless Love

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The Spare Wife

By Alex Witchel

Knopf, 286 pages, $23.95

PONCE Morris, the oddly named title character of Alex Witchel's sluggish second novel, is a gorgeous blond former model who married well, divorced well and now lives well -- and, seemingly, irreproachably -- on upper Fifth Avenue. She practices law, favors cheap bottles of Pinot Grigio and, rumor has it, thinks sex is a dull business.

The lumbering plot is set in motion when a striving editorial assistant at Boothby's Review, a stand-in for New York magazine, finds out that Ponce is having an affair with a celebrated -- and married -- fertility doctor. Among his patients, it turns out, is Ponce's best friend, Shawsie, a plain-Jane editor at Boothby's.

"The Spare Wife" -- the empty conceit of a title refers to Ponce's role in the other characters' lives -- wants to be about the imperatives of friendship. Mostly, though, it's about the imperatives of chick lit. The settings include Manhattan penthouses, where the air is thin and the women thinner, and the offices of Manhattan-based media companies. The cast includes back-stabbing women who know their way around men and designer labels, and rich guys who are loutish, ruthless, powerful and sexy. Hizzoner Michael Bloomberg is mentioned as one of Ponce's former consorts.

A reporter for the New York Times, Ms. Witchel is known for acid- tinged profiles full of telling detail. There's little evidence of her skills here. The story lacks urgency, never mind invention. Rather than show, Ms. Witchel tells -- and telegraphs. You can see the plot- furthering coincidences coming a mile away. All except the last one: It involves a character whom you haven't seen in almost 200 pages and who was, even in the first instance, barely a parenthetical. Much of what passes for exposition is strictly of daytime-drama quality. "You've never been in love with Neil," goes one dressing-down. "He's like every other man in your life -- someone to adore you, pine for you, compete for you." Spare us.

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Ms. Kaufman writes about culture and the arts for the Journal.