Hollywood rides a bike : cycling with the stars /

HERE'S the thing about being a brand name: What people want most from you is a kind of comforting predictability. Variations on a theme, sure, but when we pop open a can of Coke, it had bloody well better taste like Coke. (Remember New Coke? No? There's a reason.) And so it is with Anna Quindlen, who's as close to a brand name as a writer can be. Her twinkling aphorisms, her gentle homespun humor, her mulling over what might be termed White People Problems: this is what her fans expect from her. And this is what she serves to them in generous portions in "Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake." Quindlen's latest collection of essays deals with crossing the Rubicon from late middle age to early old age. Each chapter muses on a different aspect of the way her life (and, by inference, ours) has changed as she moves from her 50s toward her 60s. With headings like "Faith," "Expectations" and "Mirror, Mirror," Quindlen leads us to examine what we already know - and makes us feel good for being so clever as to know it. News flash: Solitude can be wonderful. Our girlfriends are incredibly important to us. Society has an unacceptable view of women's bodies. Fear is the great enemy. Having stuff is not that important. Even though our butts have fallen, most of us would not want to be 20 again. Life is unpredictable - or, as Quindlen puts it, in lines that could easily be sewn into one of the samplers she loves: "I thought I had a handle on my future. But the future, it turns out, is not a tote bag." Huh. I've also heard that life is like a box of chocolates. But in any case, Quindlen's readers don't love her for giving them news. They love her for being the person they'd like to have a cup of coffee with. So would I. Just don't drown it in cream and sugar. Do I sound a little churlish? I suppose I am. I was with her through the '80s and early '90s, when Quindlen was one of the first, and certainly the best, to write about family and balance outside the confines of women's magazines. In her Pulitzer Prizewinning columns for The New York Times, she showed that domestic issues were worthy of serious examination, and she was a bold yet nuanced voice on topics ranging from spousal abuse to abortion. She can still be wryly funny, as when she tells us, in a chapter called "Push" - a perfect title for both having kids and today's helicopter parenting - that "keeping up with the Joneses turned into keeping up with the Joneses' kids." But today she seems much more interested in holding our hands than pulling our hands away from our eyes. "You're tike a cake when you're young," she says. "Rising takes patience, and heat." Does it? Really? Tell that to Mark Zuckerberg. Rising takes impatience, and the occasional ability to be as cold as dry ice. In fact, rising is more like - O.K., I don't know what it's like, but I sure as hell know it's not like a cake. AND therein lies the problem for those of us who have loved Quindlen but at this point are a bit exasperated: her verities, while deeply soothing, aren't always entirely believable. The underlying premise of "Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake" is that we change profoundly as we get older, and in all sorts of wonderful ways. We worry less about what others think of us. We're kinder, more thoughtful, wiser, easier on ourselves, more willing to stop and smell the roses. (Or, as I imagine Quindlen's house, the freshly baked cookies.) And of course there's some truth to this. Some. Five percent? Maybe 10? But in fact most of us (and by "us," I mean me) are more or less the same idiots we were when we were 25, with perhaps a few more useful limitations. After all, the average 80-year-old, if he wants to hit 81, might be well served by dialing it back with the hookers and blow. But, anyway, please don't try to convince me that the march toward the hereafter is like a skip down the Yellow Brick Road. Quindlen has a great line about how women now practice "the science of embalming disguised as grooming." Quite so, but I'll take Botox and cheerful fatalism over false promises. The first time I wrote for a women's magazine, the editor in chief gave me this piece of advice: "Whatever you write, just make sure there's a great big hug for readers at the end." "Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake" has hugs for us on nearly every page, and lots of women love them. But some of us are secretly thinking, "Anna, stop squeezing already." Judith Newman is the author of "You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: Diary of a New (Older) Mother."