TWENTYSOMETHING CONFUSION is worse if you’re over 30. Eliza, the narrator of The Perfect Elizabeth, has a tendency to evaluate her life at odd moments: “I am thirty-two. I am listening to light music, my boyfriend is commitment phobic and I’m going to be late for work again.”

The Perfect Elizabeth

by Libby Schmais (St. Martin’s Press, $22.95)

Libby Schmais’ debut novel is being promoted as a book about sisters—Eliza and older sis Bette are “like broken parts of one perfect Elizabeth” who cling to each other for support. However, this lighthearted story is most substantive when it deals with Eliza’s struggles to define a suitable career path. Ending a lackluster stint as a paralegal, Eliza starts collecting unemployment and taking on odd jobs (such as dog-walking). During her abundant free time, she eats Oreos in bed and tries to write a children’s book.

In a way, The Perfect Elizabeth is a late bloomer’s counterpart to Ted Heller’s Slab Rat, about a man in his early 30s clawing his way to the top of the NYC publishing ladder. Both Schmais’ and Heller’s characters dream of career success, and both achieve them in the end by fantastical means. While Heller hooks us with acrid, nitty-gritty details of the glossy-magazine business, though, Schmais withholds description, making for an easy, breezy, and ultimately forgettable read. The book is somewhat enjoyable, but it ends up feeling more like the beginnings of a novel than a complete work. Character analysis comes in pithy, all-too-familiar nuggets: “I wonder if I will ever feel grown up. Maybe it’s easier to feel mature with all the proper accoutrements: kids, mortgage, husband, career.” Does Eliza ever figure it out? Not really; Schmais’ ending is pat and unconvincing, making Elizabeth seem like a Harlequin romance about one woman’s fantasy of the perfect job.