This week: Three New York women tell their New York stories.Celebrated New York playwrightWendy Wasserstein, known for her smart female characters and zingy one-liners, tries her hand at fiction with Elements of Style (to be published by Knopf), out now from CAA's Bob Bookman. In the novel, the worlds of old money, new money and not-enough money intersect through the novel's main character, a grounded female pediatrician who ultimately walks away from the social jockeying that consumes the other women in the book. Wasserstein would seem the perfect candidate to skewer the rarified Park Avenue set (her brother is Wall Street billionaire Bruce Wasserstein), but those expecting a laugh-fest from the scribe of The Sisters Rosensweig and The Heidi Chronicles might be disappointed by the novel's unexpectedly earnest tone—more unflattering anthropological study than social satire, said one exec. Wasserstein, who wrote the script for the 1998 film The Object of My Affection, is attached to adapt Elements for the screen.
Another writer to turn her pen on a world she knows well is former film scout and curator Meg O'Rourke. Sarah Burnes of the Gernert Company is on submission to publishers with O'Rourke's first novel, Piece of Candy. Burnes calls the book a "very dark, sexy satire," about two Manhattan women—one a privileged uptown art history grad student, the other a downtown artist—whose fates revolve around the scion of a venerable real estate family. "Dark" and "satire" may be two of Hollywood's least favorite words ("character-driven" and "Steven Seagal" are some others), but at least one film scout who's seen the manuscript admitted to enjoying O'Rourke's "biting, amusingly misanthropic voice." O'Rourke, who received an M.F.A. from the New School in 2003, has been published in the Paris Review and other literary journals.
Maybe they know something we don't? While even the most-anticipated YA fiction often has to bully its way onto the New York Times list before Hollywood takes notice, sometimes the most quintessentially filmable American bestsellers can be found hiding in plain sight across the pond. Take the case of Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light (Harcourt, 2003). Despite its Brooklyn author, an upstate New York setting and a story line that entangles its 16-year-old protagonist in the same real-life murder (the 1906 Chester Gillette case) that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Donnelly's novel became a bigger success in the U.K. than in its native U.S.
A selection by Richard & Judy (roughly the Brit equivalent to Oprah) and the glowing media attention that followed (even trickling down to such unlikely places as the tacky-but-amusing celebrity rag Heat) helped lob A Gathering Light (as it was titled in the U.K.) onto several national bestseller lists, including the Times of London. Yet, despite numerous awards and honors and a killer role for a young actress, film and TV rights remain available. While Donnelly's agent, Steven Malk of Writers House, noted that Northern Light has sold "far beyond the typical first YA novel" in the U.S., a stint on the Stateside lists almost certainly would have clinched a film or prestige television deal. PW's Best Books citation called it a "riveting novel."
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