Janowitz has penned a brutal update of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, accurately analyzing the social codes and economic hierarchy that functions in the New York she knows, as Wharton did a century ago.

When Florence Collins sets out for a weekend at her friend Natalie's house in the Hamptons, she boards the bus with an air of unspoken expecration, especially when she spots the very wealthy and still available， if somewhat uptight, Charlie Twig'all. But the weekend's promise of potential partnering spirals into a disastrous series of mishaps that include an unwanted nighttime visit from Natalie's husband, the near drowning of Natalie's daughter, a bad financial gamble and the expulsion of Florence from the premises.

Here is a tragicomic novel about the plight of a woman on the make in New York who spends every cent of her not-so-hard-earned money on body wraps, designer clothes,and custom-mixed makeup--all in the vain hope of attracting a rich husband. In prose at once biting and sparkling, Janowitz has created a novel of modern manners with this sly and untbrgeuable portrait of New York society, as uufbrgiving today as it was a hundred years ago.