Birthday Girls
Imagine a follow-up star vehicle to The First Wives Club for Diane Keaton and Bette Midler (Goldie Hawn loses out?replaced by Whitney Houston, perhaps), and you know all you need to know about Stone's (Places by the Sea) latest. Abigail Hardy (a Martha Stewart clone), Maddie Daniels (think Annie Liebovitz) and Kris Kensington (bestselling African American writer a la Terry McMillan), were best friends at a tony Westchester girls' prep school. As girls, they used to make birthday wishes, and now as they face 49, Abigail convenes a reunion-cum-birthday lunch and makes a startling proposal that each of them helps the others make a last birthday wish a reality. But what more could these well-coifed and outwardly successful women in full-blown mid-life crisis want? Except for Abigail, the most deeply troubled of the trio, what they crave is underwhelming, a rapprochement with an ex-lover, a late-life baby. Birthday Girls is an often-engaging read, but the cliched plot ultimately disappoints.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.