While working together on a documentary series about America's cultural mediocrities, two very different people--Jane Cody, happily married with a young son and a successful career at a Boston public TV station, and celebrity biographer Desmond Sullivan--are forced to confront personal crises in their lives, in a novel about love, commitment, and betrayal. 50,000 first printing. New York writer Desmond Sullivan doesn't believe in marriage. His five happy years with his lover Russell haven't fundamentally challenged Desmond's conviction that, at best, true love is "an acute form of tolerance." He's sexually restless, and looking forward to his four-month teaching stint in Boston as an attempt to regain some of his own identity and try to complete the biography he's been writing. Jane Cody, a Boston public television producer, is similarly disenchanted with her marriage to a clumsy, kindly professor of English. Lately, Jane has been meeting her ex-husband Dale for drinks and coffee, although she's well aware that he's a jerk. With so much going wrong in her life, it strikes Jane that she and Desmond could collaborate on a series of documentaries, salvaging both of their foundering work lives. A page-turner, not by virtue of its plot, but because of Stephen McCauley's utterly engaging narrative voice, True Enough reprises some of the themes of his earlier novel, The Object of My Affection . It also has the virtues of a good Woody Allen film: Great comic lines and brilliant social observation among a small circle of successful friends. And like so much of Allen's work, the subject is married love: Fidelity and betrayal in their many guises. A funny, well-developed novel with surprising emotional depth. --Regina Marler McCauley (The Man of the House) fans will recognize the author's trademark witty social commentary and insightful character development in his fourth book. This time out, however, the characters are less likable. Jane Cody is a public broadcasting producer in a full-blown midlife crisis. In a desperate attempt to revitalize her career, she teams up with Desmond Sullivan, a minor biographer with writer's block, to film a pilot for a documentary mini-series on mediocre noncelebrities. Desmond is equally flawed and in denial about the importance of his long-term commitment to his gay lover. "Male couples who advertise their monogamy are usually tossed into the eunuch category and end up getting invited to dinner parties where people discuss dogs," he explains. This book is not as romantic as McCauley's winsome first novel, The Object of My Affection. It's funny in parts but depressingly realistic or true enough. For public libraries and gay literature collections. Christine Perkins, Jackson Cty. Lib. Svcs., OR Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. McCauley takes aim at modern relationships (both hetero and homosexual) and urban, artsy, intellectual lifestyles in the funny, sharp, and irreverent manner that they richly deserve. No one escapes his pointed wit and critical eye. Jane Cody, producer of public TV shows of questionable merit in Boston, and Desmond Sullivan, gay New Yorker and biographer of mediocre artists, meet during Desmond's time in Boston as a visiting professor. Jane's new project, a series of televised biographies of the unfamous, may be just the spur he needs to finish his second book about a long-forgotten singer. With the large, diverse, and bizarre set of supporting characters made up of professional rivals, ex-husbands, lovers, friends, in-laws, partners, spouses, and Jane's truly appalling child to assist, the project's future is ever in doubt. Misrepresentations, half-truths, untruths, and out-and-out lies abound, even though all are in this struggle to find truth. It takes a storm of major proportions to shake everything back into proper focus and to bring truth into perspective. This appealing novel is a treat. Danise Hoover Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Stephen McCauley is the author of The Object of My Affection, The Easy Way Out, and The Man of the House. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chapter One: Things to Do In the course of one week, Anderton went from unknown lounge singer to Decca recording artist. "One morning me and the kids are having coffee," she told Look magazine in 1961, "and a record producer calls and says he wants to cut a demo. That phone call gave me a whole new life, even though nothing changed." From Cry Me a River: The Lives of Pauline Anderton by Desmond Sullivan 1. Jane Cody kept lists -- Things To Do, Things To Buy, Bills To Pay, Appointments To Keep -- but because she knew they provided the kind of irrefutable paper trail that almost always got people into trouble at tawdry junctures in their lives, her lists weren't the literal truth. Some inaccuracies were alibis in case the reminders fell into the wrong hands, while others were there to mislead the people she practically f