Fun with Dirk and Bree

San Francisco lifestyle-writer Laura Gloriana is frantic. The quintessential yuppie couple whose marriage she has chronicled for the past seven years is talking divorce just as Laura hopes to close the film deal for Perfect Love, The Story of Dirk and Bree. Trying to understand what went wrong, Laura goes back through her clips and re-reads her Lifestyle: A Magazine columns about Dirk's drug addiction, the birth of the couple's daughter Rachel (which Laura turned into the book Dirk and Bree and Baby Makes Three ) and Bree's success as a lawyer. Meanwhile Laura has problems of her own: her surgeon lover begins to fall for someone else; her father dies; the 1990 Bay Area earthquake occurs. Suddenly normal life has shifted, and Laura must realign herself with the changes. Syndicated columnist Kahn's satirical humor, while sharp and enjoyable in small doses, in bulk collapses under its own weight. (Sept.)