cover image Fabulous Nobodies

Fabulous Nobodies

Lee Tulloch. William Morrow & Company, $17.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-688-07552-1

``Life is cruel to people who aren't fabulous,'' sniffs 20-year-old Manhattanite Reality Nirvana Tuttle. In this lighthearted yet devastatingly accurate and witty social satire, former fashion editor Tulloch parodies hip young New Yorkers like Reality whose lives revolve around superficialities--wearing the right outfits, patronizing the in clubs, socializing with the right people and becoming ``fabulous.'' Fashion is sublime to narrator Reality, who names each of her ``frocks'' and sports a tattoo of the Chanel logo. As the ``doorwhore'' at a trendy nightclub called Less Is More, she haughtily decides who is garbed bizarrely enough to merit admittance. Outrageous '60s chic usually wins approval; demurely clad Jackie Onassis is unceremoniously banished. When she isn't working or scheming to get herself into Frenzee magazine, Reality cavorts with an editor of Perfect Woman who slavishly emulates the gamin look of Audrey Hepburn, and with a transvestite who owns a dog named Cristobal Balenciaga. Tulloch's cutting humor suffuses every detail, though she imparts a noteworthy message: celebrity, like its arbiters and opulent symbols, is vacuous, transient and pathetically overrated. (Apr.)