Boyfriend School

Gretchen Griner, overworked photographer for the Austin Grackle , isn't thrilled when her deadbeat editor and tomcatting boyfriend Trout sends her to Dallas to shoot the annual romance writers' ``Luvboree.'' But she returns to Austin fired up to write a ``bodice-ripper'' after meeting Lizzie, a romance queen who speaks in an irritating medieval patois, and Juanita, who touts her books as ``wet dreams for dry dames.'' Though Lizzie offers her gentle brother, ``the Wisp,'' as an antidote to the no-good Trout, Gretchen thrusts him aside in order to catch a hood on a motorcycle. Bird lets loose with the manic sense of humor demonstrated in her first novel, Alamo House . Here the hilarity is even gamier and more strained. While Gretchen racks up points for charm when evading her landlord, trading smart-aleck repartee and cruising Austin's streets in a lumbering Delta '88, the novel is heavy-handed and somewhat sophomoric. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections. (Mar.)