Burr, Chandler

Chandler Burr, the "New York Times" perfume critic who spent a year behind the scenes observing the creation of two major fragrances, juxtaposes the stories of the perfumes--one created by a Frenchman in Paris for an exclusive luxury-goods house, the other made in New York by actress Sarah Jessica Parker and Coty, Inc.

Anne Rosenbaum, the wife of Howard, a powerful Hollywood executive, and mother of their seventeen-year-old son, Sam, finds her life transformed when a request from a studio head that she make a reading list morphs into a book club that attracts all of Tinseltown, and she must somehow deal with even bigger changes when a personal crisis prompts Howard to turn back toward the Jewish Orthodoxy of his youth.