Not Just Party Girls

When Kate, Anne and Janet started the Party Girl business their goals seemed clear. First they hoped to earn enough money for a trip to Europe. Later, in college, they planned to share an apartment and continue to create elaborate, expensive birthday parties for children. But after Anne spends a weekend working with migrant farmworkers and their children, she realizes that running a successful business is not as important as she once thought. She shocks her friends and family by declaring that she plans to leave the Party Girls and devote her life to helping those less fortunate than herself. Kate, hurt by Anne's defection, hopes to use the business to keep hold of her oldest friend. But it is Janet who is desperate to keep the business together: her partners don't know that she has been using the company's money to support her family while her alcoholic father looks for a job. The girls' difficulties are both complex and believableso much so that readers may be disappointed by the novel's overly tidy resolution. Still, by questioning the values of a society increasingly preoccupied by wealth and status, this novel performs an important task. Ages 12-up. (Feb.)