Life Skills

A seven-foot-wide, 70-foot-long hotel boat that cruises from London to Birmingham provides the off-beat setting for this breezy romantic novel by British author Fforde (Stately Pursuits). As the story opens, 34-year-old Julia Fairfax has just decided to change her life as radically as possible. She breaks up with her sexist upper-class fianc , quits her job and answers an ad for a ship's cook on a 10-passenger barge-like boat She hits it off immediately with her new employer, flighty 24-year-old Suzy Boyd, a wayward daughter of bluebloods who's embarking on her first season of managing her uncle's boat. But when the only other crewman abruptly quits, Julia and Suzy are left disastrously shorthanded until help arrives in the form of Fergus Grindley, sent by Julia's nosy New Age mother. Suzy hires Fergus despite Julia's longtime grudge against him over a childhood prank, and readers will quickly recognize that her aversion falls into the clich d category of hate-first, love later. When her ex-fianc (with his mother and black Labrador puppies in tow) books a two-week passage to try to win Julia back, the complications increase. Julia has a satisfyingly dry wit, and she's believable as an everyday heroine, adamantly independent yet self-conscious about her single status. The engaging plot is fleshed out with a supporting cast of relatives, crew and boat passengers. When Julia finds herself pregnant, however, and landlocked, readers may feel as though two different stories have been uncomfortably spliced together. Still, Julia and Suzy are funny and appealing, and their boating adventures turn them into a nautical Thelma and Louise as they explore female friendship, the lure of hunky men and sexual crises of several kinds. (Oct.)