This midcentury memoir of a young woman’s adventures in San Francisco reads like a West Coast Breakfast at Tiffany’s, told in a conversational style. Frequently laugh-out-loud funny, it offers a nostalgic look at the City by the Bay during one of its heydays.

Susan K. Darby graduates college with few ambitions beyond falling in love, so she and a friend elect to head West circa 1960. They find an apartment in a dilapidated Victorian that comes with several roommates, endless visitors overstaying their welcomes, and countless cocktail parties. As she writes in the titular essay, “Decisions came easily at our place. It was consequences we had no talent for.” After misadventures in temp work and stretches of unemployment, she discovers brokerage work and becomes a stockbroker.

The narrative, told in vignettes, is endearingly witty. Darby mentions liking college, except for embryology class: “I never could see anything under a microscope except my eyelashes. Whatever was actually on the slide, I identified it as spider legs, and this system carried me further through the semester than you might imagine.” She occasionally dips back farther in time, including discussing the phenomenon of first grade crushes. Initially, these are jarring departures, but they settle into a rhythm within the larger story.

Kevin Stone’s clean line drawings add punch to these pithy tales; a hibachi grill, microscope, or the San Francisco city skyline pop nicely on the page.

Darby uses a few words in dubious ways (“I gazed unbelievably”) and occasionally drops in a curious colloquialism (“…she said, in the tone of voice that would make every American kid swear off spinach no matter what the reward”), but overall this goes down as smoothly as one of those oft-mentioned drinks. The author is a natural raconteur and skilled scene setter, with stories worth telling.

Fine at any time, this would be a top-notch vacation read for any fan of humorous essays, fun and frothy but with bite.