Isn't It Romantic?(The Talk of the Town)('The Romantics')

The plot of "The Romantics," a new novel by Galt Niederhoffer, unfolds during the weekend wedding of Lila Hayes, a blond, beautiful, witty, and wealthy Yale graduate, and her former classmate Tom McDevon, a handsome, charming, social-climbing cipher. The book's heroine--the clever, ill-at-ease, Brooklyn-dwelling Laura Rosen--was Lila's college roommate and is now her maid of honor; Laura dated Tom first, and, unbeknownst to the gilded Waspy bride, has for years sustained an intimacy with the groom-to-be. In the book's first chapter, Laura arrives at the nuptial site (an island off the coast of Maine) burdened by an unflattering pewter-colored gown and a heart filled with loathing for her best friend. Inevitably, romantic chaos ensues.

A party to celebrate the book's publication was held the other day at the home of Niederhoffer's friend Kathryn Tucker, a blond, beautiful, witty, and wealthy movie producer, who hosted guests on the roof of her Chelsea town house. The dress code was "slutty bridesmaid or slurring groomsman," but Tucker had ignored her own injunction, and was dressed in a flattering strapless dress the color of sea foam and red patent-leather Louboutin pumps with four-inch heels. "Look at me--it's conservative, conservative, conservative, and then the red pumps," Tucker said, as she elegantly navigated the treacherous decking underfoot, wineglass in hand.

Tucker has never been a bridesmaid, she said, "but I hope to be one day. It seems the better role." She is separated from her husband, John Sloss, a sales agent for independent films. "The institution of marriage is a curious thing," she said, with a sad smile and a tilt of the head. "It's a noble ideal." Theirs has been an amicable parting--"We're best buds," she insisted--and Sloss now lives in the lower half of the town house, which the couple bought in 2004 for a little more than five million dollars, while Tucker and their two small children live upstairs. "It's like the perfect bohemian existence, except not," she said.

Tucker recalled that she had disliked Sloss intensely when she first met him, during a dinner at Chasen's, in Los Angeles, twelve years ago. "As I was leaving, I had a premonition that I was going to marry that guy," she said. "I kept trying to shake him. He told a friend of mine that he had fallen 'deeply and irrevocably in love' with me. I am a sucker for romantic gestures--I am Jane Austen's biggest fan." They were married at their farmhouse in Columbia County. "I had my dream wedding," she said. "My flowers were thistles--prickly things. The gift we gave people to take home was a jar of blueberry jam, and on the label it said, 'How do I get out of this jam?' Which was not a very auspicious start. I wore Vivienne Westwood. Richard Linklater's ...