Behaving Badly, by Isabel Wolff

A crop-top for your bookshelf

There are, no doubt, people who decide to tackle a Major Work of Classic Fiction while lazing by the pool. I've heard of them. There are, most definitely, people whose holiday reading is a stack of magazines. These I've seen with my own eyes. But for most of us, holiday reading falls somewhere between The Brothers Karamazov and the summer bumper true-life issues of Take A Break or Chat (which are heady and compulsive stuff and should not be sold to minors). Happily, there are writers like Isabel Wolff to fill the gap between those two extremes.

Wolff's novels are dressed up in chick-lit garb, those neon pink, lime-green or bright-blue covers with overly cute drawings and coverlines. These are

the equivalent of crop-top and hipsters on the human form, and, like crop-tops and hipsters, they serve to draw the eye - on the bookshop shelf, at any rate. But what's between the covers here is a generally superior confection. Wolff is a Cambridge graduate, though she wears her learning lightly. But did you know that Shakespeare invented the name Miranda specifically for the character in The Tempest? It comes from the Latin

"mirare", to admire, by the way.

Which you'll learn, among other things, if you follow the adventures of Wolff's latest heroine, Miranda Sweet. One of Wolff's talents is inventing central characters that the reader can identify with, without making them over-saccharine. They also tend to have great Best Friends, which, again, is something we can all relate to. Plus Wolff has an uncanny knack for pinning down all the worst characteristics of Grim Men Our Friends Have Dated. Check out Nigel and Alexander in Behaving Badly. Enough said.

Wolff's writing quirks are charming. All her books feature delightful animal characters along with the human kind, and a sympathetic dog is one of her trademarks. This time around it's Herman the sausage dog, Miranda's faithful companion. Wolff's PR services to the canine world have been extended, in Behaving Badly, to llamas, not usually a species that is considered particularly cuddly. Wolff makes them sound extraordinarily attractive; in fact, they rather overshadow the male characters in terms of personality. I might buy one of my own.

There is a certain lack of gritty realism here. People chat while making each other omelettes for supper. They own fluffy little dogs called Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow. They are extremely middle-class and civilised.

But how much grit does one need? We aren't budgies, after all. Though a depressed budgie does feature in Behaving Badly - Miranda is an animal behaviourist (and the provision of a companion greatly improves Tweetie's low mood). And, hip hooray, Wolff eschews lengthy, graphic sex scenes. These are as tedious to read as they must be to write. A discreet two paragraphs suffices when Miranda finally gets it together with her chap.

It's probably not giving too much away to say that the right guy gets the gal in the end, but it's obvious from the beginning of Behaving Badly that a happy ending will make everything right for the initially rather uptight Miranda. The tale of her journey to lurve and fulfilment is definitely one to pack alongside your bikini and suncream. And you won't want to throw this one away once the holiday's over - a re-read later in the year will cheer up winter blues as well.