Don’t discount this novel as just another chick lit story. Rules for Saying Goodbye, by Katherine Taylor, is a heartfelt novel that follows the pain and pleasure of growing up. Katherine Taylor (the fictional one) is shipped off the boarding school at age 11 from the sweltering small town oppression of Fresno, California to a Massachusetts prep school.

After she graduates from college in California and then finishes a postgraduate degree in New York City, Katherine is repulsed by the idea of settling for a “real job” and becomes a bartender instead. She procrastinates from writing anything deep and meaningful, lives with her gay brother and frequently avoids calls from her mother.

Katherine is charmingly naïve and just a tad hopeless with men. She lives in NYC, then moves to London for her lover, then back to NYC only to reside with her fiancé in Rome in spite of her awful Italian. She is a lonely soul who should know better, but doesn’t.

The rules she develops are found halfway through the novel. My favourite rule is Number Seven. Cry politely. Do not cry like a horse. More poignant though is Rule Eleven, leaving in dignity so that once you are gone, you are gone for good. There’s no wallowing in a mountain of snotty tissues here.

Taylor’s subtle character observations make for wry humour. Katherine’s friends are sexy, artistic, deeply troubled and all have drinking problems. In fact all the characters are mildly alcoholic. Her dialogue is short and swift.

Best of all are Katherine’s conversations with her long-suffering mother. Your children are drug abusers, Katherine declares to her mother, after her siblings share Vicodin at her grandmother’s funeral. Incidentally, being high is the only way Katherine and her siblings can get along at a family event.

A character-driven novel in four parts, Rules travels along like a leisurely bike ride. You’re simply an observer in Katherine’s life, looking in at her relationships and her many mistakes. Rules has been criticised for romanticising the NYC lifestyle, since the struggling protagonist lives on a bartending salary and regularly drinks hotel cocktails and buys gourmet groceries. However, I’d like to think that living in NYC lets you swap dinner for cocktails any day of the week.

Rules for Saying Goodbye is a great novel for any girl traversing through a quarter life crisis or dreading the onset of hitting 30 – you’re not alone, you’re only human.