WILD CATS & COLLEENS

This first novel by an English-born journalist who now edits a magazine in Dublin has a good idea at its heart: to blow away those blarney cobwebs from the Irish image and to show that the country is as up-to-date, materialistic and obsessed with glamour and trivia as much of the rest of the Western world. The tone is set immediately by the introduction of Lorna, a Dublin PR queen whose life is a round of parties and hangovers, but who seems over the top even by New York standards. Then there is Gloria, who has pulled herself up from the slums by her skill with a comb and runs a highly successful hair salon. Sandy is an ambitious journalist who is writing a career-making story about the ads placed by American billionaire Xavier Power (who worships his Irish background) seeking a beautiful young Irish wife. In the course of finding out who will end up with whom in the large, hyperactive cast, the reader is treated to a series of farcical excesses and scenes that are apparently intended to be satirical but that usually come off as merely shrill and absurd. Power's assistant, Liam, who wants to write the Great Irish Novel but gets led astray by the comfortable life, is only one of the more archly obvious caricatures. Prunty moves her characters around with some skill, and gets in some neat jabs at the publicity world, but the tone is so overwrought that any glimmers of quiet sense are promptly overtaken by another noisy climax. Maeve Binchy, for all her easy sentiment, gets much closer to a recognizable contemporary Ireland than this. (Nov.)

Forecast:Even for lovers of things Irish, this will be a tough sell, unlikely to be helped by reviews or word of mouth.