Every Woman Loves a Russian Poet — Elizabeth Dunkel

Kate Odinokov, an attractive 33-year-old advertising executive, contemplates suicide in this readable, if unremarkable, first novel, but admits, ``I could never kill myself: I love clothes too much.'' Already infatuated with her handsome Italian therapist Frank Manne (or is it merely transference?), Kate meets Boris Zimoy, a Russian emigre poet visiting the city from Paris, falls in love with him, and changes her name to Katia. Kate/Katia makes two trips to Paris and, after some emotional battering, comes to see that Boris is a shallow, narcissistic womanizer. ``Every woman loves a man once in her life who is totally wrong for her,'' she observes, but it is only through this painful process that Katia comes to know and accept herself. Dunkel's clear prose moves along at a nice clip, but it's riddled with banalities and cliched descriptions of Manhattan and Paris in the mid-'80s. The treatment of psychotherapy is superficial, but Dr. Manne and his neurotic therapist girlfriend Jo Anne are sensitively drawn; Kate/Katia herself is funny and vivacious enough to keep the reader turning pages despite the precious descriptions of her fabulous apartment, chic wardrobe and adorable cat. (Oct.)