During the last days of the disco era, in the early 1980s, a popular dance club becomes the center of nightlife for a group of not-quite innocent young people new to Manhattan. With his first novel, the director of Metropolitan and Barcelona proves that he is as talented a writer as he is a filmmaker. Based on his most recent movie, this is not your usual cheesy quicky film novelization but a fresh and witty comedy of manners that stands on its own literary merits. Almost 20 years after the events depicted in the film occurred, narrator Jimmy Steinway, The Dancing Adman, has been hired by Castle Rock Entertainment to write the novelization. Claiming that the real story started at a party in the Hamptons (not depicted in the movie) where he met the lovely Alice Kinnon, Jimmy recalls how the subtle charms of the boyfriendless social failure stirred a rivalry among Jimmy and four of his Harvard classmates"and the bitter jealousy of her roommate, Charlotte. Set in Manhattan in the early 1980s at the end of the disco era, Stillman!s tale is a wry, perspective portrait of urban young people and their mating rituals. Both fans of the film and sophisticated readers will enjoy. -"Wilda Williams, Library Journal Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. When the movie The Last Days of Disco was released in 1998, it met with much critical acclaim. Now Stillman has transformed his film about the lives and loves of a group of twentysomethings in the early 1980s into a witty and engaging novel. The story opens with several of the main characters, including the narrator, Jimmy, worrying about whether or not they will get into one of New York's exclusive nightspots, known only as "the Club," where the bouncers handpick those they will let in each night, so as to create a kind of artificial population of their own making. The young frequenters, awkward but much-adored Alice and cruel but insecure Charlotte and their friends and lovers, try to adjust and thrive as their world shifts around them and one era jarringly gives way to the next. Stillman's characters are as alive on the page as they are on screen. Like the movie, this first novel is a small gem. Kristine Huntley Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "An enchanting valentine." -- The Boston Globe "Poignant and hilarious . . . [highlights] Stillman's undeniable mastery as a satirist." -- Publishers Weekly "Witty and engaging . . . this first novel is a small masterpiece." -- Booklist "An airy blend of Thurber and Nancy Mitford, sophisticated without making a fuss about it, and lots of fun."--Salon Recommends "Miraculous and unexpected . . . puts one in the the mind of the good old days of elegant social fiction--of Wharton and Fitzgerald, Marquand and Cheever.--The American Spectator "Always entertaining."--USA Today "Mr. Stillman's novel is witty and has all the nuances that have made him the popular writer and director of such films as Metropolitan and Barcelona."--The Wall Street Journal "A cinematic historical first: A book that redeems, and explains, a [movie] . . . A classy, well-packaged and well written story."--New Times James W. Steinway has a long career in advertising. In the 1980s he published several highly regarded short stories in The Beacon, the much-missed Cambridge, Massachusetts, literary magazine. This is his first novel. Whit Stillman wrote and directed the films Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco. This is his first novel, too. "Breathtakingly beautiful. Stillman recreates his youth with precision and passion."