THE SEVEN YEAR BITCH

Successful Manhattan Mom’s best-laid plans go haywire after she loses her Wall Street job.

Getting laid off is bad enough, but financial planner Isolde Brilliant finds it particularly galling that she will now have to spend more time with husband Russell. Brutally honest and a little outrageous—she loves the smell of her baby son’s dirty diapers and dreams of sex with the grim reaper—Isolde has grown increasingly disillusioned with marriage. Russell, a hapless man-child ambivalent about fatherhood, runs a tiny, unprofitable publishing business out of their Tribeca apartment and has no qualms about his wife footing the bill for their lifestyle. On the day their son Duncan turns one, she catches him telling one of his authors that having a child was a mistake and joking about suicide. That same week her nanny quits, forcing her to find a replacement quickly, while she decides on her next career move. She hires Shashti, an illegal Guyanese immigrant who is married but unhappily childless at age 40. Isolde takes it upon herself to get Shashti pregnant, sending (and treating) her nanny to the expensive OB-GYN she used to birth Duncan. Not surprisingly, the lines between employee and employer blur, as Isolde begins to wonder if interfering in enigmatic Shashti’s life is really a good idea. Enter Gabe Weinrib, a handsome, quirky multimillionaire from her past who has decided that, married or not, Izzy is the woman for him. She’s mightily tempted, wondering if Gabe is the love of her life, a love she would be foolish to let slip away. The fact that Russell comes across as a total putz should make Isolde’s ultimate decision a little easier, but an unexpected development complicates everything.

Belle (Little Stalker, 2007, etc.) has once again invented a hilarious heroine, one who manages to be far more memorable than the plot.