Noble Effort

Betsy von Fnrstenberg broke into the movies while a teen, appeared on the cover of Life and Look, and then became a Broadway star (at left, she's out on the town with Nicky Hilton in the fifties). What else was there left to do? Write a novel, of course. Mirror, Mirror (Joi>e) depicts a world of inexhaustible glitz in a hectic tour of jet-set locales, where people with names like Converse Archer do things like tipple wine at Harry's Bar. If her overheated prose gives off a strong whiff of privilege, the noble-born von Fnrstenberg has only done what every first novelist is supposed to do: urite about what you know.