Gag reflex

Lucinda Rosenfeld plays the field

by Nina Willdorf

WHAT SHE SAW . . . By Lucinda Rosenfeld. Random House, 284 pages, $23.95.

The title of Lucinda Rosenfeld's debut novel launches its readers through a dizzying laundry list of her protagonist's conquests. What She Saw . . . is only the beginning: after the word "in," it runs as a vertical list of men's names down the length of the cover. "She" is tortured twentysomething Phoebe Fine, and we don't ever really get what she sees in any of her 15 trysts, each of which claims a chapter. After the catchy device wears off, all we're left with is the idea that Rosenfeld uses Phoebe's men as a vehicle for the young woman's coming of age -- through cumming.

At least, that would be the case if Phoebe ever came, or grew. From her first crush on Stinky Mancuso to her affair with a married professor, this arch young girl addicted to adulation, cigarettes, and sticking her finger down her throat heads down a road of self-hatred that's fueled by her own masochistic sexual fire as she moves from boy to boy. It's a potentially tired tale that's been covered recently by no less than Candace Bushnell (Four Blondes) and Amy Sohn (Run Catch Kiss). But Rosenfeld's account, unlike those penned by her fellow former New York nightlife/sex columnists (Rosenfeld wrote the "Night Owl" column for the New York Post), is more cringe-filled than charmed, more ironic than idyllic, more ominous than slapstick. And it's precisely that cleverly captured awkwardness that elevates it from beach read to a prime spot on the nightstand.

Throughout, Phoebe binges on booty, flirts with anorexia, and toys with thoughts of suicide -- all for effect. She is both "easy to appease" and "eager to please." It doesn't even matter who "he" is. Of Kevin McFeeley, a/k/a Chapter 9, she notes that "it could have been anyone on top of her that night." Sex becomes like "pissing" or "producing fluids in each other's company."

The novel accelerates through Phoebe's bedpost notches, a crescendo that reaches a climax in Chapter 12, "Anonymous 1-4," with its catalogue of rote lines from her lays. "It was the act that followed that finally irked her -- the way it always led down the same path, to the same ineluctable conclusion, prompted by the same stiff drinks, the same parted lips, the same loaded glances, the same false promises. The same `do you want me to fuck you?' And `I want to fuck you so badly right now.' And `You know you want me to fuck you.' . . . And `I'm so fucking attracted to you.' "

The rhythmic repetition mimics Phoebe's obsessive behavior, embodies the relentless drive of the story and its protagonist. And it drives home Rosenfeld's critical point: all this screwing, is, well, screwed up. Rosenfeld never steps out of her narrator to criticize or blame; she delivers her stinging message under a veil of subtle satire that's both beautifully executed and merciless. What She Saw . . . could have fallen into the trendy realm of sexual fiction that's coyly similar to autobiography, or "chick lit," as it's been dubbed -- a flirtatious new post-Wurtzel subgenre without much staying power. But this is Sex in the City with dorky black penny loafers rather than fancy Manolo Blahniks. It's Run Catch Kiss with unfortunate frat boys thrown into the mix along with the standard East Village pseudo-intellectual types.

What prevents Rosenfeld from coming across as hopelessly hardboiled, and Phoebe as repulsive, are the recurring moments of vulnerability and Phoebe's cool assessments of her own behavior, which get manifested in "dishonest shrugs," "unspecific sadness," and a "triumphant loss of appetite." Rosenfeld cashes in on the embarrassing gestures, thoughts, and emotions no one likes to own, and in so doing she closes the distance between the reader and Phoebe. Especially if you know or have ever been that ambitious and aimless educated urban twentysomething struggling with the line between being sexual and slutty, trying to figure out how to be good at being bad.

What She Saw . . . feeds the already contentious dialogue between Mars and Venus. By the end of the novel, I felt empty and spent, disheartened and disgusted. And that, it seems, is Rosenfeld's goal. From boys #1 to #15, she captures the nuances of nookie with writing that is fresh and smart, raw and wry. She gets it. She gets it so well that by the end of this novel, you won't want to any more.