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Well it went down easy, and I definitely enjoyed it. I think it is quite risky to have your main character be comedy writer, and actually show their comedy writing, because if you cannot deliver then you have exposed yourself as a writer. I do think Sittenfeld managed to write Sally's writing well. I also have a soft spot for epistialtory writing, especially for romance and I could believe that such an email exchange would be possible in 2020 under the conditions the characters were in.

I wish that The Night Owls hadn't been so slavishly modeled after SNL; it was distracting and invited too many comparisons to specific, real personae. I also felt that the author's politics were clumsily added to the story.

Immediately after reading this, I read Sittenfeld's Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice and that was kind of interesting because I realized a couple of things. One, that I think Sittenfeld basically just wants to write the same main character all the time (middle upper-middle class woman from a midwest city who is not super hot but is clever and is a writer and kind of judgemental and wary about love and 2) that the P&P DNA is very much present in Romantic Comedy, where Sally is Elizabeth and the rock star guy is a combo of Bingley (nice, a little cheesy and airy, but sweet; also mega rich) and Darcy (super mega rich and uses wealth to assist the MC with family drama). In both books we get a lot of mansion porn. Sittenfeld makes some light critique of celebrities and wealthy people but really just seems to want to write P&P again and again

One thing really bothers me...Sally is famous for writing about women farting and pooping and being real bodies with hair and not airbrushed fantasies. But there is a subplot about her not wanting a partner to know when she poops / that she poops. She becomes close to this partner, learns to be vulnerable and I was sure that we would have had the character accidentally fart and feel embarrassed but that the partner would be cool about it as proof of true love, but that never happened. She also spends a lot of time talking about hair removal. Why lean into how much the character rejects norms if she does not actually reject those norms in her actual life?