Name Dropping
Reviews • Inspiration • Read the First Chapter
Two women with the same name living in the same Manhattan apartment building? It could happen -- and does -- in Jane Heller's seventh novel, a breezy summer read as clever as it is comic!
Preschool teacher Nancy Stern is in a personal and professional rut. But what really puts a dent in her self-esteem is the realization that another woman named Nancy Stern has just moved into her building ... a Nancy Stern who lives in the penthouse ... a Nancy Stern who interviews celebrities for glossy magazines ... a Nancy Stern who's chummy with Harrison Ford. Nancy's loss of her own specialness deepens as she keeps getting the other, more glamorous Nancy's mail, phone calls and party invitations by mistake. It's all too much to bear -- until a man calls one night, intending to ask the other Nancy out on a blind date. In a moment of madness, Nursery School Nancy accepts, and what follows is a raucous tale of mix-ups, murder and mistaken identity. Leave it to the wickedly witty Jane Heller to come up with a story of a woman whose humdrum life turns out to be anything but.
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People Magazine
July 3, 2000
Lucy Ricardo had nothing on Nancy Stern, heroine of the latest madcap murder mystery from Heller (Sis Boom Bah). Like TV's famously batty redhead, Nancy is easily dazzled by the glitz of show business -- and she concocts some delightfully harebrained schemes to get a taste of the glamor. She even has an Ethel-like sidekick, a fellow preschool teacher who gets drawn into her pal's increasingly risky capers, prompting a villain to tie her to the bathroom faucets and stuff a sock in her mouth.
But Nancy is also a thoroughly modern woman, a quick-witted thirtysomething divorcée with a well-developed sense of cynicism who lives on Manhattan's Upper East Side. So when she sets out to impersonate a celebrity journalist in order to dine with the potential man of her dreams, the fallout is as much Sex and the City as I Love Lucy. Throw in a sinister scheme involving a notorious ring of diamond thieves, a sprinkling of clever plot twists and a dab of Space Goo (don't ask) and you've got a rollicking and delectable -- if soufflé -- light-summer read. (St. Martin's, $24.95)
Bottom Line: Saucy heroine and screwball plot add up to a romp
-- LAURA JAMISON
Romantic Times
June 2000
"Remarkable....Name Dropping is a 'Jane Heller' at her very best. Readers who enjoyed Sis Boom Bah are sure to love this masterfully written story by the great Ms. Heller."
Newsday
June 18, 2000
"Spirited and clever....Name Droppingis a tasty snack you'll gobble up gladly."
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
June 18, 2000
"Heller has concocted another delicious spun-sugar romance laced with suspense....Cute, romantic and amusing....This is summer and Heller fans are not looking for War and Peace. They will enjoy Name Dropping."
Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette
June 11, 2000
"What makes Heller's material engaging is her seemingly endless sense of humor, her knack for creating suspense that lures - rather than repels - readers, and her keen attention to character development. Name Dropping has all of those traits....A tale of adventure, intrigue, murder and hilarity that is seemless from beginning to end."
Dayton Daily News
June 10, 2000
"Fluffy and light, funny and quick....Love and mystery are part of the tale, which is peppered with one-liners and the down-to-earth observations that have become Heller's trademark."
Nashville Tennessean
June 4, 2000
"Deliciously amusing....Heller, author of the popular Sis Boom Bah, has written another entertaining page-turner."
Baltimore Sun
June 4, 2000
"A charming New York entertainment. A nursery school teacher named Nancy Stern discovers that a glamorous celebrity interviewer - named Nancy Stern - has moved into her apartment building. The satire of New York yuppie pretension is trenchant; the new Italian restaurants all end in 'either -luna or -luma.' There's a pin with a big yellow diamond, misunderstandings, murder and mayhem, all under the noses of the upwardly mobile nouveau riche parents who send their innocents to the 'Small Blessings' pre-school. Yet there are finer themes here about trust and risk, luck and caring."
Boston Globe
May 28, 2000
"Jane Heller is feisty, funny, and fully in control in Name Dropping....It's a great story with much wry comment."
USA Today
May 25, 2000
Manhattan,that vibrating magnet for young women looking for big-city love, is the setting for Jane Heller's meringue. Nancy Stern is an attractive, affectionate teacher in a wildly upscale preschool called Small Blessings. She actively likes children, even difficult, aggressive 4-year-old boys like her current pupil, Fischer Levin.
Her job also requires her to tolerate their odious, demanding, enormously rich parents. Capturing the overheated atmosphere at many yuppie preschools, the novel conveys the tension between parents who can donate entire libraries and teachers who have an eagle-eye view of their pint-sizemiscreants. As Nancy explains: "I'm not saying that all the parents are nutcases, but the ones who are, really are. And their nuttiness rubs off on their 'trophy offspring.' I mean, these are people who are intense about seeing their kid at Harvard."
Nancy's job is enhanced by her close friendship with her co-teacher, Janice. Alas, while Janice is sexually adventurous - "a veritable Energizer bunny" about men - Nancy is falling into a depressing rut after her marriage went sour several years ago.
Then another Nancy Stern moves into her apartment building, and the old Nancy finds herself with a peek into a glamorous celebrity journalist's lifestyle because phone calls and deliveries keep getting misdirected. It's flowers, multiple lovers, champagne in the afternoon, invitations to exclusive soirees. The old Nancy is dazzled and decides to try on the new Nancy's identity for just one blind date.
The result, of course, is a charmingly improbable love story and involves lots of intrigue, the odd murder and a gang of jewel thieves. It's a creamy éclair and taxes not one single brain cell.
Publisher's Weekly
April 1, 2000
Heller proves once again that she has breeziness down to an artful science. In her latest romantic suspense novel (after Sis Boom Bah), there's another powerful premise as well as a quirkily humorous heroine to hang it on. Nancy Stern, self-described Brunette Who Keeps Her Head, is a teacher at Manhattan's Small Blessings, a tony pre-school where ultrachic parents deposit their "trophy offspring." Not completely satisfied with her lot in life, Nancy finds herself suffering from serious envy when a second Nancy Stern -- who turns out to be a glamorous celebrity journalist -- moves into her building and Nancy I begins to find $10,000 AmEx bills and invitations to private movie screenings in her mailbox and phone messages from ardent male admirers. Nancy I is intrigued, desperately wanting to learn if the grass is really greener; when she gets another misdirected phone call, this time from a man asking for a blind date, she decides to be Cinderella for one night and impersonate Nancy II. The blind date turns out to be the man of her dreams, but now that she's told him so many creative untruths, how can she ever go straight? To complicate matters, Nancy II is soon murdered and Nancy I finds herself caught up in a new existence that's even more exciting than she bargained for. Those without cause to take it personally will find it a treat to see Heller turn her culturally observant wit on certain parenting trends. There's even a rollicking and appropriately themed "shoot-out" to go with the nursery school setting.... Readers will come for the fast pace and the fun, of which there's plenty.
Booklist
4/1/00
Reviewed by Kristin Kloberdanz
Lately, the most exciting thing in preschool-teacher Nancy Stern's life is staying home with a good book. When she suddenly starts receiving invitations to White House galas and private film screenings with Harrison Ford, her ego is given a jolt until she realizes a much more glamorous Nancy stern, a sneering celebrity journalist, has just moved into the penthouse in her Manhattan building. When the "wrong" Nancy accepts a call from a potential blind date, she decides to pose as the writer. Soon she becomes ensnared in a murder mystery and a romance, which may or may not be the result of her mistaken identity. Heller, author of Sis Boom Bah, manages again to mold what could be a dark, twisted tale into a sharp, lighthearted story. Heller provides some genuinely shocking revelations concerning the mystery at hand in between jocular scenes that jab at modern dating rituals and in which witty repartee abounds, especially between the self-deprecating Nancy and her cocky best friend, serial-dater Janice.
Library Journal
4/1/00
Reviewed by Elizabeth Mary Mellett
Preschool teacher Nancy Stern learns the truth of the old adage "be careful what you wish for" in Heller's very funny new novel. Our heroine realizes that she's been in a bit of a rut when another woman named Nancy Stern moves into her building's penthouse -- and this new Nancy's mail (from Kevin Costner), invitations (to a movie premiere with Harrison Ford), and dry cleaning (a mink coat) wind up being delivered to our Nancy, who rapidly comes to believe that she is the wrong Nancy. When teacher Nancy accepts a blind date meant for the other Nancy, things rapidly spiral out of control. Murder and mayhem follow, all in Heller's trademark witty and entertaining style. Fans of Heller's Sis Boom Bah will enjoy this clever tale.
I have a wonderful literary agent named Ellen Levine, and it was Ellen's own story that provided the germ of the idea for this novel.
At my first meeting with her in her Manhattan office, I mentioned that I had known two other Ellen Levines. She said, "Oh, there are lots of us in New York, and we all get each other's mail and phone calls." She added that the editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping was named Ellen Levine and that they were often invited to the same dinner parties and ended up with each other's place cards by mistake.
I thought, what if two women with the same name lived in the same apartment building? Wouldn't they get each other's mail and phone calls? And, if so, what sorts of complications might that bring about?
Before long, I had fleshed out the plot for Name Dropping, in which the heroine, whose name is Nancy Stern, discovers that another woman named Nancy Stern has just moved into her apartment building. The story is about mix-ups -- and murder. But it's also about our desire to live vicariously through others, others we perceive to lead happier, more exciting lives, and the discovery that the grass may look greener but usually isn't.
Published in June, 2000, Name Dropping was especially enjoyable to research. The heroine is a preschool teacher in NYC, and in order to find out what that profession is all about, I enlisted the help of my sister, Susan Alexander, who just happens to be a preschool teacher in NYC! She let me observe her class as she read to and sang to and played with the kids, and gave me lots of useful anecdotes. She loves her work and has handed that love down to her daughter, Elizabeth Alexander, who's a preschool teacher in NYC too. In other words, Name Dropping was a family affair. Hope you have fun with it!
Optioned by Miramax for a feature film.
