I took this photo of author Emily Giffin in August 2006 at an all-day Book Club Conference sponsored by the Memphis Public Library and Mid-South Reads. 
  I had tried to get a good shot from my seat in the front row while Giffin stood at the podium discussing her new book.
    To my consternation, she stopped in mid-sentence, gave me an annoyed look and asked that I not take the photo until she posed for it. She explained that she hated to be photographed grimacing or with her mouth open. She then posed prettily, but because I was flustered, I snapped a picture which cut off most of her head.
    However, after her talk, Giffin graciously let me take another photo with head attached. Later, I wrote : “By rights 34-year-old Giffin should appear frazzled, harried and careworn. She’s the mother of twin boys 2 1/2 years old, and she recently visited 17 cities in five weeks promoting her third novel, “Baby Proof.” Instead, she looks young and impeccably chic, and comes across as articulate and charming.”
    Two years later, Giffin, a former lawyer, originally from Illinois, lives in Atlanta and has a new daughter, Harriet, as well as a new book on the New York Times best-sellers list.
    “Love the One You’re With,” (St. Martin’s, $25) was described by a reviewer in our “Books in Brief” column on June 1 as “a satisfying, light, chick-lit read about the pain of self-discovery.”
   I don’t disagree with this assessment, but readers should be aware that there’s a darker quality and a bit more complexity to Giffin’s book than one might expect from a work in this genre.
    I liked the slightly snarky, sarcastic tone that Giffin sometimes employs, especially evident when she exploits the Yankee vs. Southerner conflict generated by her characters’ backgrounds.
    Photographer Ellen Dempsey, (from Pittsburgh) is married to sweet solid caring, Andy (from Atlanta) who’s also the brother of her former college roommate and BBF. Ellen says, “I loved everthing about him, including the things that would have exasperated most girls. I found it endearing the way he had trouble remembering people’s names (he routinely called my former boss Fred, instead of Frank) or the lyrics to even the most iconic songs (“Billie Jean is not my mother”). I felt lucky to be with a man who, after six long years with me, still did the half-stand upon my return from the ladies’ room and drew sloppy, asymmetrical hearts in the condensation of our bathroom mirror.”
    They live happily in New York City until Ellen bumps into Leo, an ex-lover she hasn’t seen in eight years, who wants to rekindle their old romance.
    Fleeing temptation, Ellen offers no objection when Andy wants to move back to Atlanta to join his father’s law firm, and the Pittsburgh raised / New York City infatuated Ellen is forced to adjust to life among Buckhead’s elite old-moneyed class.
     Ellen adores Andy’s family who are welcoming and warm, but soon that hospitality begins to seem like smothering.
     She’s bored by her sister-in-law’s friends who chatter about silver patterns that their grandmothers picked out for them upon their birth or the latest gossip at the club or “the ideal carat size for diamond-stud earrings (apparently anything less than one carat is too ‘sweet sixteen’ and anything more than two-and-a half-is ‘so new money’)”
     Ellen misses her career and New York City and the passionate love affair with Leo. The issue she must resolve: “How can I truly love the one I’m with when I can’t forget the one who got away?”

To read an interview with Emily Giffin from the “Atlanta Journal Constitution” about her life in that city, click here.

Below is a description of the city in Giffin’s book that caused quite a reaction among Atlantans. (Click here to read their comments.)

“A life sentence of having to sit in traffic and having to drive everywhere, even to grab a cup of coffee or a quick manicure. Of sterile strip malls and no late-night delivery options. Of mindlessly accumulating shiny, unnecessary possessions to fill the empty spaces in our sprawling home …Of still, sweltering summers with Andy off playing golf and tennis every weekend and no chance of a white Christmas. Of saccharine-sweet, blond, blue-eyed Lilly Pulitzer-wearing, Bunco-playing neighbors with whom I have virtually nothing in common.”