Secrets to Happiness

The central plot is a contemporary twist on Woody Allen's film Manhattan, with the genders reversed: a woman who is involved with a much younger man falls in love with her married friend's lover. The central character - Holly Frick - has just got divorced, published a distastrous novel, and has been forced to go back to television writing with her gay writing partner, Richard, who is on a self-destructive binge. Holly is Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse, if Emma had lived in a time and place where married women spoke openly about their lovers, where gay men ordered partners on the Internet, and where answering machines and emails were the locus of romantic miscommunication instead of elegant hand-delivered notes. Like Emma, Holly gets involved in other people's romantic tangles, and she does so armed with unwavering moral certainty. And, like Emma, she's often completely off the mark!