Peoples & Cultures - Fiction

One Woman Short

Name: One Woman Short
Author: Nelson George
ISBN: 9780684864617

by Nelson George

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Overview

There were many women in his past.

Will one of them become his future?

Rodney Hampton, a thirty-three-year-old L.A. native, is a pro at juggling women. He and his best friend, Timothy Waters Jr., spent many years recklessly scoping out honeys at ski summits, getting acquainted with MBAs at Martha's Vineyard beach parties, and macking coeds at the Howard homecoming. Yet when Tim gets married, Rodney begins to wonder whether what his ailing mother tells him is true — is he really "one woman short"?

After compiling a list of all his previous lovers, he goes knocking on the doors of three ex-girlfriends to see if he may have let true love (and matrimony) slip away: Belinda Myles, a club promoter; Sabena, a Cedars-Sinai nurse/dancer; and Amy Davis, a born-again bus dispatcher. The question is: Will anyone in this trio let the man who loved and then left come back into her life?

About the Author, Nelson George

Nelson George is a writer, filmmaker, and cultural critic who's been working professionally more than twenty-five years. He is the author of eight works of nonfiction, most recently Post-Soul Nation, five novels including the national bestseller One Woman Short, and several screenplays. George lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Editorials

Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction

Written by a man who knows the ins and outs of Hollywood's African-American elite, George's humorous (some say), "fast-paced" novel introduces a once-confirmed bachelor who sets out to make one of three former girlfriends his wife. Author George "has potential," but many readers just "suffered through" this "light read." "A shallow nobrainer." "Too much explicit language." "Not a book I'd recommend."

Steve Kandell

One Woman Short reads like a hip-hop answer to Nick Hornby's High Fidelity... George's eye for detail and ear for dialogue are undeniably strong...
—The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

Breezy, cleverly assured coming-of-age tale about a savvy, unmarried Los Angeles buppie who explores his bed-hopping past. The third novel from New York journalist and screenwriter George (Seduced, 1996; Urban Romance, 1994) begins as a mildly satirical comedy of manners salted with up-to-the-minute slang and a refreshingly different take on the Tinseltown landscape. Rodney Hampton, a self-employed, 33-year-old Hollywood publicist, wonders why, after dating 133 women in 10 years (he not only counted, but kept track of addresses and telephone numbers), the closest he's come to the altar is being best man at the recent marriage of his friend Tim. His widowed mother, slowly losing her mind in a nursing home, and his hairdresser sister, raising three children as a single mother, vividly demonstrate how tough it is to be alone: Hampton longs for something more than a few months of great sex. When a recording company puts him on retainer for three months, guaranteeing a steady paycheck and the possibility of a six-figure salary if he's hired full-time, Hampton picks three past girlfriends as potential future wives. While flacking a multiethnic restaurant, an indie film, and the next great rap singer from Bakersfield, he looks up chaste, Bible-quoting Amy, decadent nightclub owner Belinda, and night-shift nurse Sabena, so magnificently gorgeous it seems a crime she can't realize her ambition to be a dancer. Hampton learns that he can't go home again (his childhood house is occupied by Hispanics) and that, as cads go, he actually wasn't so bad. George's meandering but engaging story gets bite from its sly observations of the emerging black middle class, and color from thedelightfullydiscordant supporting characters: Where else but L.A. can a blustering male porn star meet his match in a plucky Kinko's photocopier?