Review: 'Romantic Comedy,' by Curtis Sittenfeld

I am a big fan of Curtis Sittenfeld, and particularly love her reality-adjacent work — riffing on Hillary Clinton in "Rodham," Laura Bush in "American Wife," and on "Pride and Prejudice" in "Eligible." OK, perhaps "Pride and Prejudice" is not an example of reality, but "Eligible" is an example of how much fun Sittenfeld has playing with existing characters and story structures.

Here, the reality is "Saturday Night Live," reimagined as "TNO," "The Night Owls." It's run by Nigel, not Lorne, and "Weekend Update" is called "News Desk," 30 Rock is called 66, and most of the details — the pitch meetings, the table reads, the run-throughs, the 11:30 airtime — seem to be modeled directly on the many "SNL" memoirs that Sittenfeld said she read as research for this project.

If you're not a connoisseur of comedy and celebrity gossip, there's something you might not know. It's now become a thing when a talented but not super-hot comedian dates a gorgeous female star. The examples are Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande, followed by Kim Kardashian; Colin Jost and Scarlett Johansson; Dave McCary and Emma Stone.

The reason you need to know this is because the meet-cute in Sittenfeld's latest, "Romantic Comedy," relies on it. Sally Milz, a writer on "TNO," is pitching a sketch called "The Danny Horst Rule." Horst is one of her fellow writers and he has been having a very public romance with a beautiful, volatile actress named Annabel. The Danny Horst Rule asserts that while an ordinary male comic can date a female 10, it never works the other way around.

And the very week she pitches this idea, a male 10 named Noah Brewster, a beloved guitar-playing rock star, shows up on the show and falls for Sally.

Sittenfeld has fun with the conventions of this fizzy genre (she maybe could have had a little more fun with the title, which seems a bit basic. Like a subtitle working above its pay grade.) A rom-com always starts with the Meet-Cute, which is followed by the Obstacle, which is followed by the Grand Gesture, and then is tied up by the Fairy Tale Ending. The Obstacle here is twofold. One aspect is Sally's extreme insecurity, which leads her to doubt that Noah's high-octane flirting can possibly be seriously intended. She's rude to him, and they don't part on good terms.

Then comes the other Obstacle, which is also a blessing in disguise. It's ... the pandemic! Two years after Noah's appearance on "TNO," it's March 2020. Noah has a serious run-in with COVID right in the beginning of lockdown, and once he recovers, it's carpe diem time. The second part of the book contains the email correspondence he initiates with Sally, and this time, safely on her own beloved turf of the written word, Sally doesn't screw it up.

This (overly long) section of soul-baring and history-sharing is followed by the Grand Gesture, and then some other pretty nice gestures, too, set deep in COVID times. Noah proves to be not only gorgeous and talented, but also intuitive, insightful and a living saint. Sally stays a little bit annoying with her obsessive concern about her looks, but if you think that's going to stop the Fairy Tale Ending from coming, well, I've got a piece of land in Florida.

The book is strongest when it's doing its reality-adjacent thing in the first section — the sketch ideas, the comic banter among writers and cast, the inside look at how sort-of funny ideas are workshopped and molded into their best and funniest selves are great fun. Come for that, stay for the wish fulfillment.

Marion Winik is a Baltimore-based writer and professor.

Romantic Comedy

By: Curtis Sittenfeld.

Publisher: Random House, 304 pages, $28.

Event: Book launch, in conversation with Julie Schumacher, 6 p.m. April 10, Parkway Theater, Mpls.; tickets $15-$51. bit.ly/3YMdmBy