Shallow stereotypes don’t cut it in chick-lit ‘thriller’

WHAT do you get when you cross a brain-dead rip-off of a John Grisham novel with a bad imitation of “Bridget Jones’s Diary”?

The answer is “Chambermaid,” Saira Rao’s debut novel about a naive law school graduate who clerks for a demented federal judge.

The book’s narrator, law clerk Sheila Raj, isn’t some brainiac. She’s just a regular New York girl with “a killer wardrobe, a darling (rent-stabilized) apartment in the West Village, and a fabulous group of friends.” She likes boys and having fun, though she’s a little insecure and sometimes wets her pants (literally) when people around her yell.

A budding Sandra Day O’Connor she isn’t.

Sheila feels happy when she lands a clerkship with Judge Helga Friedman, a “President Gerald Ford appointee, first woman ever to sit on a federal court of appeals, and former Penn Law Professor. In sum, a legal Goddess.”

But Sheila soon feels sad (or “barfy,” as she puts it elsewhere in the book). The job “sucks” (another of the author’s word choices). The other clerks are nerds who break “off into little cliques. Why had nobody invited me? I was wearing a cute outfit and had great hair.”

Even worse, Friedman turns out to be meaner than the boss in “The Devil Wears Prada,” who at least wore cool outfits. Friedman just wears a black robe.

Get it?

So does the marketing division of Grove Press, which must’ve thought it had a live one here. Chick lit sells, and people love legal thrillers. Why not combine them into one salable book?

There is always something appealing about the story of a young person’s first tentative steps in a chosen profession. The clash of romantic ideals with the reality of work, the hard-won competence and eventual compromises that constitute a career is a universal journey. Although the dynamic between an older female boss and her young assistant has been worked to death in books about the fashion and entertainment industries, Rao’s notion of placing the relationship in the serious-minded world of a federal judge’s chambers feels fresh and rife with possibility.

The problem is one of execution. Rao identifies great material but fails to build it into anything satisfying.

As a legal thriller, the book is a nonstarter. By uncovering a dark conspiracy involving a death penalty case, an ambitious politician and appellate court intrigue, Sheila threatens to block the appointment of a Supreme Court nominee. This loopy conceit fails to give the book -- which is lazily constructed and filled with gaping logical and legal holes -- any shape or narrative drive.

And although Rao has identified great comic potential in Sheila and the judge, her disdain for both characters is off-putting. Sheila is a study in shallowness. Without irony or self-awareness, she obsesses over landing a “prestigious gig” while criticizing fellow clerks as “patronizing pedigree whores.” She thrills at the chance of having “a real-life lesbian” as a fellow clerk but ultimately decides to stick with gay men friends instead: “What kind of self-respecting woman could live in the gayborhood without a gay sidekick?” She enjoys making fun of the accent of the Laotian boy who serves her coffee but spouts nonsense herself: “[C]ountless innocent people have been executed over the past decade.” (Really? Where?)

Nothing illustrates Sheila’s shallowness more than her hatred of Friedman. Though Friedman is acknowledged to be a champion of civil liberties and a gender trailblazer, Sheila detests her as a “toxic bitch” who hates babies, vacations and quality hair care. Friedman’s gravest sins are being old and ugly.

“Judge Friedman was a lot of things -- evil and gross come to mind,” Sheila says, describing the judge as: “About four feet ten inches tall, with orthotics on her crooked feet, polyester pantsuit, sunglasses the size of Fat Albert’s behind, and a massive bun atop her tiny head.” Sheila smirks that Friedman has to drag her leg because “her right one was markedly longer than the left.” When Friedman attempts to engage her in conversation, Sheila wonders if Friedman “knew that two long, slightly curly hairs were coming out of her right nostril.” When Friedman’s husband dies, Sheila complains about having to attend “the biggest three-ring circus of all: SHIVAH.” There she is nauseated by the food and behavior of mourners such as “Esther, who was licking pickled herring from her bony fingers

[T]he way everyone was eating, you’d have thought these people had just been bused in from a refugee camp.” At least Rao had the good taste not to say concentration camp.

Elsewhere in the book, Sheila’s hatred for Friedman descends into a kind of hysteria: “The puffiness left her eyes, leaving them shriveled jelly beans. I wished Ronald Reagan were there to eat them.” Huh? Later, Raj writes, “Before our very eyes, [Friedman] appeared to turn green, as a tail crept from under her desk.”

Reviewing a book, like judging a case, is not wholly a subjective affair. Some objective standards exist, and a few truths are self-evident. One truth is that an author attempting to write a funny book needs to have a sense of humor. If Rao has one, she has hidden it under a mean-spirited barrage of stereotypes. I don’t mind that her portrayal of Friedman as a loud, pushy, obnoxious, cheap, misshapen devil and manipulator of American institutions seems offensive. What I object to is that it isn’t funny.

And so, the great chick-lit/legal drama remains unwritten. Despite her ambitions, all Rao proves in “Chambermaid” is that she is untalented in two genres.

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Jonathan Shapiro, a former federal prosecutor and adjunct law professor, writes and produces television shows, including, most recently, the upcoming NBC police procedural “Life.”