Beginner's Greek: A Novel (Hardcover)

The two young professionals of Collins's polished debut, Holly and Peter, meet on a flight bound from New York to L.A. They tacitly understand they are soul mates, and she invites him to dinner, but Peter soon discovers that he has lost the number Holly wrote on a page torn from Mann's The Magic Mountain. With Peter's financial career and New York society as a mundane backdrop, years pass and Holly ends up married to Jonathan, a successful author and womanizer—and, conveniently, Peter's best friend. Still aching for his one-time seatmate, Peter marries Charlotte, a dull Francophile, because it made sense. Charlotte, of course, is also in love with someone else—a former flame, Maximilien-Francois-Marie-Isidore. At Peter and Charlotte's wedding, Jonathan is struck by lightning, precipitating an endless series of events that changes the lives of family, friends and lovers alike—including Peter's boss and Charlotte's ex-stepmother. Former Time editor Collins, 48, writes as if fully aware that anyone who saw any one of a thousand other romantic comedies will find the plot familiar: he plays romantic comedy clichés with an expert coolness. Anyone for whom chick lit is a guilty pleasure will find the tone here multiple notches above the usual fare. (Jan.)
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"Pure Pleasure Plus Wit: The arch and romantic read of any season, James Collins'Beginner's Greek makes you half-believe in miracles. With his triteness detector in high gear and his sights trained on social hypocrisy, Collins spins a chance encounter on an airplane (shy guy meets his dream girl) into a perfectly calibrated comedy of missed opportunities and muddled loves." (O Magazine 2008)

"Despite the contemporary setting, Collins's fiction debut has all the traits of a 19th-century romance-an omniscient and sometimes playful narrator, elegant prose that meanders through the lush terrain of disparate lives, an occasionally arch but always dulcet tone, frequent flashbacks, characters whose minds are plumbed (the females are especially well sounded), sophisticated dialog, and a much-delayed but delightful resolution. Jane Austen fans will feel right at home." (starred review) (Library Journal (starred review) 2008)

"Beginner's Greek is full of humor and a rare, perceptive sweetness. Jim Collins is a skeptic, a realist, and a fervent romantic all in one." (Cathleen Schine, author of She is Me and The New Yorkers 2008)

"In Beginners Greek, James Collins achieves a tone - a farcical fatalism, poised, astringent, generous - that I thought until now was the exclusive property of the finest British comic novelists. How wrong I was, and how right this novel is, building from small domestic observations and cunning dramatic turnaboutstoward a wise and ample vision of human romantic folly." (Walter Kirn, author of Mission to America and Thumbsucker 2008)

"Such a rare delight: a smart, elegant, madly romantic comedy with characters who seem perfectly, charmingly real as they swerve and stumble from fairy tale to social satire and back again. If you ever wished there were more Jane Austen and Laurie Colwin novels to read, or more Preston Sturges and George Cukor movies to watch, your dream has hereby come true." (Kurt Andersen, author of Heyday 2007)

"Beginner's Greek is either an incisive romantic comedy or a feel-good social satire; it hardly matters, it's a huge entertainment. With his big, sloppy heart and astringent soul, James Collins is the new Jane Austen, only taller." (Larry Doyle, author of I Love You, Beth Cooper 2008)

"James Collins is on home turf when it comes to the secret world of the American aristocracy. He knows these people uncomfortably well. I enjoyed it enormously." (Julian Fellowes, author of Snobs 2008)

"James Collins has written a romantic, funny and insightful page turner about love in modern times, missed opportunities and the wheel of fate (with a blow-out!) that is so engaging and real, you will find it impossible to put down. Peter Russell is an everyman filled with longing, lust and good sense. I promise you will root for him as fate throws him curves aplenty on his path to true love. Beginner's Greek and Peter Russell are keepers." (Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Lucia, Lucia and Big Stone Gap )

"Entertaining...the perfect airplane novel." (The San Francisco Chronicle )

"unabashedly romantic" (New Yorker )

"A witty romantic comedy." (People Magazine )

"Mr. Collins has a wicked sense of humor" (WSJ.com )

"A satire of modern love that will charm both sexes equally" (Vanity Fair )

"Part fable, part farce, [an] ultimately charming debut novel" (Kirkus )

"...a toothsome and literate romantic comedy of the sort not seen since Laurie Colwin..." (New York Times House & Home Penelope Green )

"[Collins] makes magic of it all...so much old-school charm that you want to believe, and...so much patient detail that you actually can. A-" (Entertainment Weekly )

"The marriage story hasn't been done this well since Jane Austen, and lord knows, a lot of us have tried. It is deftly plotted, sweetly funny and very very smart. Really delicious." (Beth Gutcheon, author of More than You Know )