Even though the magazine and fashion worlds have recently been pretty thoroughly mined for entertainment purposes, Koslow as a keen observer of seemingly minor details and hidden meanings, has crafted minor details and hidden meanings into an engrossing tale peopled with memorably colorful characters raising her novel above the bar. So while you may wish to call think of Little Pink Slips as a work of fiction let us get real since, one only has to look at Bebe Blake’s character to realize that she represents Rosie O’Donnell when Rosie took over McCall’s magazine and changed its name to Rosie.

Bebe Blake, representing Rosie, is portrayed as the nemesis to our protagonist Magnolia Gold, representing Sally Koslow, the mild mannered editor of Lady Magazine, with its penchant for good recipes and household tips. These character opposites begin to clash when Blake takes over the magazine tipping Magnolia’s safe world upside down as the magazine’s focus changes from one directed at the everyday homemaker to a personality-driven venue modeled after Oprah and Margaret Stewart’s Magazines. What follows can only be described as a catastrophic series of events that anyone who watched the Rosie O’Donnell lawsuit and her more recent personality clashes can easily envision.

Some of the more notable issues the book targets include Bebe’s demotion of Magnolia over their differences of opinion, Bebe’s insistence on creative control, clashes with other personalities, and Bebe’s sexual harassment of an eighteen-year-old boy. While one tends to root for Magnolia, however, the end result is that she eventually pulls out of the magazine, her colleagues lose their jobs, and a messy law suit ensues meaning that basically no one comes out a winner in this book.

Given all of that one must still say that the book is enthralling and one has to care about the quirky, slightly neurotic Magnolia but the most fun is in wondering which details in the book came from Koslow’s experience as the wrongly ousted editor in the McCall’s/Rosie debacle. Koslow’s writing style is like chick lit and will be on the best-seller lists leaving you wanting to know when Koslow’s next novel will hit the stands! [tags]Little Pink Slips, Sally Koslow, Bebe Blake, Rosie O’Donnell, McCall’s Magazine, Rosie, fashion magazines, expose, fiction[/tags]