Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber: The Katya Livingston Chronicles by Adele Lang

From the Publisher

After weasel-eyed tax inspectors question her work-related claims, Katya Livingston is forced to keep a financial diary. As well as documenting the cruel and parsimonious ways of her ad agency boss, Katya waxes lyrical about putting up with loser friends, mortal enemies, and thoroughly bad restaurants. She also throws in a completely candid account of her love life, just in case some of it is tax deductible. What begins as a private account of expenses rapidly becomes, through Katya's chronic delusions of grandeur, a matter of public record: first as a tawdry gossip column, then as a salacious book, and finally as a Hollywood B-movie.
Bitingly written with wit and style reminiscent of Candace Bushnell, Adèle Lang's novel is a cutting, bitchy, hilarious take on the young-single-British-woman genre

SHE magazine [UK]

Wicked, witty and wild. Is the world ready for Katya Livingston?

19 magazine [UK]

Bridget Jones only thinner, wittier and prettier, Katya's a psycho bitch from hell...A fab read.

Elle magazine [Australia]

Addictive.

US Weekly

...Katya...[tries] to find Mr. Right by looking in all the wrong places. Put it on your beach-read list.

Kelly Ripa

This book is like Bridget Jones meets Sex in the City. Go out and get it—you will love it!

Publishers Weekly

A single, saucy British woman delivers her narcissistic rants in diary form (sound familiar?) in Adele Lang's Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber. Katya Livingston is a vain, nasty advertising copywriter who lands a gig producing a gossip column for a London tabloid - really just an outlet to crow about her prolific intake of alcohol and the search for "bonkable bachelors." The column leads to a book deal and even a brush with B-movie stardom as Katya rails against vegans, foreigners and the poorly dressed. What this sendup of the tired Bridget genre lacks in originality is made up for in sheer bitchiness. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Elle

Addictive.

SHE MAG

Wicked, witty and wild. Is the world ready for Katya Livingston?

19 magazine

Bridget Jones only thinner, wittier and prettier, Katya's a psycho bitch from hell...A fab read.

Kirkus Reviews

A first novel from Britisher Lang (How to Spot a Bastard by His Star Sign, 2002) offers up some sharp and funny moments, but with bad behavior its only joke, it quickly becomes exceedingly thin stuff. A self-absorbed, 30ish copywriter with an off-the-charts sense of herself, Katya Livingston smokes in the elevator because it's banned in the office, uses her Save-the-Children orphan as her personal porter, and for entertainment tempts the fiances of friends. The story consists of Katya's journal entries, published in her own newspaper column, a writing job that she finessed behind the back of Teddington, a friend who hoped to secure it for himself. Along with Eliza, a New Age colleague; Ferguson, a failed gay male escort; and a few others, Teddington is among the friends Katya constantly uses, abuses, and then humiliates in her column, attributing any resentments to jealousy. Novelistic concerns like plot and character don't apply in what is really just a string of farcical sketches that play off the Bridget Jones style. As such, it indeed has its moments, as when we find Katya, "manhunting" by setting a tripwire in Hyde Park, "After collecting only two old ladies and a poodle, get disheartened and go home again." In addition to the failures and embarrassments of her (barely) one-dimensional friends and colleagues, Katya's column chronicles her adventures looking for free drinks, higher-paying work, and a man up to her standards (she never finds one, tossing candidates aside like candy wrappers), writing for a TV series, house-sitting for a rich friend ("accidentally" losing her prize dog because he's a bother), fabricating a libelous book about a semi-famous ex-lover's shortcomings, thenbecoming the subject of a similar book by Teddington-and finally heading off to Hollywood to become a (pornographic) movie star. There are some real laughs here, and the complete lack of redeeming value is refreshing. But the entirety is another demonstration that less is more. Take in small doses.

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