From Library Journal
After her ex-boyfriend informs her that he is leaving and that she could lose a few pounds, Becky Bernstein puts herself, and her apartment, on a weight-loss program. While Becky excavates the depths of her closets, drawers, and cupboards, she relates the stories that surround the various items she comes across. An old dress, a record album cover, a folding chair?all evoke memories that speak to the reader of the story of Becky's earlier life. Her career as a talk-show host on a local Berlin television channel, her passion for attending museum exhibit openings, as well as her search for Mr. Right serve on occasion to return Becky to the present. The end of the diet is also the end of the book. The story is funny and entertaining, well written, and enthusiastic. Recommended for literary collections.?Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., ProvidenceCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In the 1963 movie Gidget Goes Hawaiian, the plucky, boy-crazy teenager discovered romance and wisdom on the beaches of Maui with her boyfriend "Moondoggie." In this 1990s update, a plucky, boy-crazy expatriate settles in staid Berlin and runs through a host of unworthy, insensitive men before she finds true love. Having just been dumped by the latest in a long line of beaus, Rebecca Lee Bernstein has embarked on a crash diet and a cleaning binge. As both she and her apartment shed pounds, she takes stock of her life, going over her reasons for relocating from New York City to Berlin, her relationships with old and new friends, her work as a talk-show host, and her burgeoning interest in writing fiction. Jammed with more one-liners than a stand-up comedian's act, this novel sounds like autobiography rather than fiction, but the author's voice is tart and funny, yielding a very amusing read. Joanne Wilkinson

From Kirkus Reviews
From an American-born actress now living in Germany, a first novel that offers wry and refreshingly upbeat reminiscences of life in the single lane--both here and in Berlin. Hostess of a local cable talk show, Breakfasts at Becky's, fortyish Becky Bernstein has just been dumped by yet another inappropriate boyfriend. Now surveying her apartment and her figure (her boyfriend's last words: ``It wouldn't hurt you to lose a few pounds around the hips''), she decides that it may be time to clean up her act. She'll clear out the 20 years of accumulated stuff in her apartment and also lose weight. As she does both, Becky mingles memories of her childhood, youth, and lovers in with a narrative of her present efforts to change. A New Yorker, and the daughter of an intermittently successful salesman father, she's a city girl who loves to museum hop and shop and is unfazed by dirty subways and weirdos. She admits to finding the Germans with their orderliness, respect for authority, and verb-impaired language deeply strange. She had first come to Berlin after college, dragged along in the wake of Jrgen, an architect she met and fell in love with at the Museum of Modern Art. Once in Berlin, she lived in a leftist commune with Jrgen and, when their affair ended, moved into the apartment she's occupied since. Between card games with neighbors, meetings with friends, and the celebration attendant on the news that a story of hers has been accepted by Mademoiselle, Becky recalls old friendships and her ebullient family. And while she and her apartment are in the process of shedding their excess, she unexpectedly meets her true love. Recollections that at times seem forced or superfluous, but the Becky who has them is so full of life and energy, so utterly in your face, that much can be forgiven. A lively and entertaining debut. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Local TV talk show host Rebecca Lee Bernstein - previously of Forest Hills. Queens, and now of Berlin, Germany - has decided her life is past due for an overhaul. Her latest flame just dumped her on the day before they were to leave for a two-week vacation in Italy. As she sorts through mountains of worn-out clothes, old records, and half-read newspaper clippings - taking a break every now and then for a bowl of tomato soup and a glass of mineral water - old memories resurface: how she fell head over heels in love with one Jurgen Markowski when she mistook him for Dustin Hoffman in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art, and soon agreed to follow him all the way to his communal apartment in Berlin. How, once arrived, she was indoctrinated into German Leftism and taught to march in street demonstrations shouting "USA-SA-SS" (until she realized she was equating the Land of the Free with Nazi death squads and decided she'd rather not, thank you). How, when Jurgen eventually opted out of her life, she learned the hard way that the men of Berlin were as flawed as the New York variety. And that actually, her real love was not for him but for his town: Berlin, Europe's one glitzy metropolis, and New York's only Old World double.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

"This is a story about clutter and calories." So writes expatriate standup performer Rahlens in the epilogue to her jaunty but muddled novel of an American woman reaching midlife in Berlin. The narrator (the brash Becky Bernstein of the title) doesn't lie: this is a story about clutter and caloriesand precious little else. There is a plot of sorts: Becky, who makes her living as hostess on a local talk show, has been asked to write a national program on post-reunification Germany. During a vacation spent fretting about the program, dieting and tidying her apartment, she comes across various memory triggers, among them a flower-power dress, cheerleader pompoms and a Dictaphone. Each occasions a moment of self-analysis: we learn at random of her swindler father, of her many disappointing and vapid love affairs and of snooty, nostalgic returns to her native New York ("I remembered Fifth Avenue before it became an open air flea market, an outdoor five-and-ten"). During her six-week siege on fat and disarray, no one in her life makes more than a cameo appearance. Rahlens seems to find wiseacre Becky entertaining enough on her own. Readers are unlikely to be so indulgent. (July)

Library Journal

After her ex-boyfriend informs her that he is leaving and that she could lose a few pounds, Becky Bernstein puts herself, and her apartment, on a weight-loss program. While Becky excavates the depths of her closets, drawers, and cupboards, she relates the stories that surround the various items she comes across. An old dress, a record album cover, a folding chairall evoke memories that speak to the reader of the story of Becky's earlier life. Her career as a talk-show host on a local Berlin television channel, her passion for attending museum exhibit openings, as well as her search for Mr. Right serve on occasion to return Becky to the present. The end of the diet is also the end of the book. The story is funny and entertaining, well written, and enthusiastic. Recommended for literary collections.Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence

Kirkus Reviews

From an American-born actress now living in Germany, a first novel that offers wry and refreshingly upbeat reminiscences of life in the single lane—both here and in Berlin.

Hostess of a local cable talk show, Breakfasts at Becky's, fortyish Becky Bernstein has just been dumped by yet another inappropriate boyfriend. Now surveying her apartment and her figure (her boyfriend's last words: "It wouldn't hurt you to lose a few pounds around the hips"), she decides that it may be time to clean up her act. She'll clear out the 20 years of accumulated stuff in her apartment and also lose weight. As she does both, Becky mingles memories of her childhood, youth, and lovers in with a narrative of her present efforts to change. A New Yorker, and the daughter of an intermittently successful salesman father, she's a city girl who loves to museum hop and shop and is unfazed by dirty subways and weirdos. She admits to finding the Germans with their orderliness, respect for authority, and verb-impaired language deeply strange. She had first come to Berlin after college, dragged along in the wake of Jürgen, an architect she met and fell in love with at the Museum of Modern Art. Once in Berlin, she lived in a leftist commune with Jürgen and, when their affair ended, moved into the apartment she's occupied since. Between card games with neighbors, meetings with friends, and the celebration attendant on the news that a story of hers has been accepted by Mademoiselle, Becky recalls old friendships and her ebullient family. And while she and her apartment are in the process of shedding their excess, she unexpectedly meets her true love.

Recollections that at times seem forced or superfluous, but the Becky who has them is so full of life and energy, so utterly in your face, that much can be forgiven. A lively and entertaining debut.