There’s nothing I hate more than a book about writers (apart from a book about projectile vomiting), and this book seems to have writers and writing all over the place. Brooke, a publisher in Australia, is reading a new manuscript, telling the story of Eve (who wants her partner Liam to marry her) her sister Sam (a famous writer who loves someone she can’t have) and Anna (who is pretending she’s not pregnant). And it’s not only Brooke who has to read all about them: we have to as well. And you know how I feel about books within a book.
The book is actually mostly about Eve and Sam, with just a chapter about Brooke here and there. Nothing really happens to Brooke except her reading the book, talking about what a great style the writer has, and then giving her opinions of the characters. Not only is this rather boring, it sounds rather as though Melissa Hill is congratulating herself on her own writing skills, and telling us what we have to think of the characters. Hill probably didn’t mean to do this at all though – and in order for her highly original story to work, it would have been difficult to avoid these pitfalls.
But I found the book very annoying. I hardly ever agreed with Brooke about the characters. Maybe most people would agree with her, but I think there are always going to be people with different views of fictional characters, just as there are going to be different views of real people.
I didn’t agree that Anna was cold. I thought she was really lovely. Brooke and the other characters go on about how sweet Eve is, and how giving, and there is some truth in this, although I always found her a bit clingy and disturbing. But Anna is at least as giving as Eve is, and it’s clear to me throughout that, even when she’s making some crazy decisions, she is trying to do the right thing. Not all her actions make sense though. I wasn’t convinced by Anna’s decision to hide the pregnancy from her boyfriend Ronan. There wasn’t really a convincing reason for it – except as a really obvious way of making you start wondering whether the baby was Ronan’s – and once the pregnancy is out in the open, everything is more or less fine. Anna’s stupidity is part of the reason why she is such a likeable character (whatever Brooke says), but Hill really does stretch credibility too far at times.
The most successful character is probably Sam. She’s very kind and supportive, even though she’s not always having a great time herself. Her crush on Anna’s boyfriend Ronan is nearly as adorable as Ronan himself. Eve gets her knickers in a twist, worried that Sam is going to make a move on him, but if she knew her sister half as well as I did, she’d know this would never happen. And there’s nothing wrong with having a crush on someone. I’ve got a crush on all sorts of people, including some married ones, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to make a move on any of them. I think Boris Johnson is really sexy, but even if he was single, I know we wouldn’t get on. I hate politics; I’m even less organised than he is, and I think our differing opinions on the proposed Docklands Light Railway extension to Dagenham Dock would get in the way of any romance.
The Last to Know has a lot of twists, and some of them are very clever. But Sam quite often saw them coming. I wouldn’t have minded but it felt as though I’d hardly had the chance to work anything out for myself. It’s no fun knowing what’s going to happen in advance. Not when I’m reading a book for the first time anyway. And there were plenty of stupid twists too. This is a shame, as the idea is very clever. Perhaps if Eve, Sam and Anna had been given a stronger story, and if Brooke had had a story too (and if she’d dropped all the ooh what great writing crap), it might have worked really well.
And a train from Liverpool Lime Street to London Victoria?????? I don’t think so. Oh, it’s possible. The lines are all joined up. You could get the train from Liverpool Lime Street and follow the usual route as far as Willesden Junction, then the tran could take the Kensington Olympia branch and turn off just before Clapham Junction, taking the line to Battersea Park and Victoria. But apart from the fact that trains on that route just don't exist, what’s the point in doing that? What’s wrong with the direct train to Euston?
Monday 29 December 2008
Saturday 27 December 2008
The Stepmother (Carrie Adams)**
So, which is the best Tube line for a marriage proposal? Tessa isn’t thrilled when James proposes on the Northern Line. Her colleague Matt thinks a nice line like the Central or the Piccadilly Line would have been okay, but not a depressing line like the Hammersmith & City. But the Northern Line is, apparently, the worst of all.
The Piccadilly Line is my favourite, but it would be the worst for a marriage proposal. It’s full of disused stations and branches. There’s no way I’d be listening to what anyone was saying to me. The Northern Line would actually be one of the best, as long as we’re on the Charing Cross branch. But ideally, I’d choose the Bakerloo Line. Anywhere between Regent’s Park and Lambeth North, proposals are welcome. If I want to marry you, that is.
The book is about Bea, who’s split up from her husband Jimmy who is now dating Tessa who calls him James. It starts off quite nicely, making you assume Jimmy is still married to Bea, and then it goes downhill from there.
The problem with the book is that it is either too long or too short. Too short because Adams is writing about a group of people with a whole multitude of problems, and she doesn’t really go into any of them very deeply. It’s too long because what is there just isn’t very interesting. The book has alcoholism, death, serious illness, adolescence, panic attacks, abortion, violence and sex (I’d recommend turning a few pages very rapidly when Tessa starts her striptease: you do not want to know). Any those ingredients can make an exciting book, but there are really too many of them for just one.
Fourteen year old Amber (she’s up herself, just like Amber in The Chocolate Run) is the most interesting character, but she seems more like ten than fourteen, which makes it all the more shocking when she starts snogging a seventeen year old called Caspar – although, to be honest, Caspar has a similar mental age to Amber, so in that respect they’re a good match. Jimmy is a bit useless and thick, which can be quite attractive, but not here. He’s quite kind when Bea has a panic attack in a clothes shop (perfectly natural: it’s happened to me, and I’m not even fat) but otherwise he’s a selfish twat. It’s amazing Bea and Tessa both want him. I don’t!
As for Bea and Tessa, Adams’ two first-person narrators… well, I didn’t like either of them really. Part of the problem with Bea is that Jimmy treated her really badly, and she still hasn’t recovered, but she’s just an object of sympathy, not actually a likeable person. You also miss a lot of her story because during the sections from Tessa’s point of view, you only know about what Bea’s up to from second-hand reports that actually end up telling you more about Tessa’s paranoia than they do about Bea.
Tessa is certainly well-meaning, but there’s something very hard about her. She has problems, and they do upset her, but she deals with them in her own way, and she doesn’t seem to need much help or sympathy, although considering I hated her from the start – the book starts from Bea’s point of view, and gives the impression Tessa will be a villain character - I suppose she did grow on me a bit. Tessa also starred in Adams’ novel The Godmother. Maybe if I’d read that first, I might have liked Tessa a bit more, but the book is a complete story, rather than an obvious continuation. That’s one thing in its favour.
There are some nice humorous touches, such as Amber’s ‘romp’ in the bushes, and the moment where Bea and Tessa see one another for the first time, which is shown from both their very different points of view. But mostly it didn’t quite work.
The Piccadilly Line is my favourite, but it would be the worst for a marriage proposal. It’s full of disused stations and branches. There’s no way I’d be listening to what anyone was saying to me. The Northern Line would actually be one of the best, as long as we’re on the Charing Cross branch. But ideally, I’d choose the Bakerloo Line. Anywhere between Regent’s Park and Lambeth North, proposals are welcome. If I want to marry you, that is.
The book is about Bea, who’s split up from her husband Jimmy who is now dating Tessa who calls him James. It starts off quite nicely, making you assume Jimmy is still married to Bea, and then it goes downhill from there.
The problem with the book is that it is either too long or too short. Too short because Adams is writing about a group of people with a whole multitude of problems, and she doesn’t really go into any of them very deeply. It’s too long because what is there just isn’t very interesting. The book has alcoholism, death, serious illness, adolescence, panic attacks, abortion, violence and sex (I’d recommend turning a few pages very rapidly when Tessa starts her striptease: you do not want to know). Any those ingredients can make an exciting book, but there are really too many of them for just one.
Fourteen year old Amber (she’s up herself, just like Amber in The Chocolate Run) is the most interesting character, but she seems more like ten than fourteen, which makes it all the more shocking when she starts snogging a seventeen year old called Caspar – although, to be honest, Caspar has a similar mental age to Amber, so in that respect they’re a good match. Jimmy is a bit useless and thick, which can be quite attractive, but not here. He’s quite kind when Bea has a panic attack in a clothes shop (perfectly natural: it’s happened to me, and I’m not even fat) but otherwise he’s a selfish twat. It’s amazing Bea and Tessa both want him. I don’t!
As for Bea and Tessa, Adams’ two first-person narrators… well, I didn’t like either of them really. Part of the problem with Bea is that Jimmy treated her really badly, and she still hasn’t recovered, but she’s just an object of sympathy, not actually a likeable person. You also miss a lot of her story because during the sections from Tessa’s point of view, you only know about what Bea’s up to from second-hand reports that actually end up telling you more about Tessa’s paranoia than they do about Bea.
Tessa is certainly well-meaning, but there’s something very hard about her. She has problems, and they do upset her, but she deals with them in her own way, and she doesn’t seem to need much help or sympathy, although considering I hated her from the start – the book starts from Bea’s point of view, and gives the impression Tessa will be a villain character - I suppose she did grow on me a bit. Tessa also starred in Adams’ novel The Godmother. Maybe if I’d read that first, I might have liked Tessa a bit more, but the book is a complete story, rather than an obvious continuation. That’s one thing in its favour.
There are some nice humorous touches, such as Amber’s ‘romp’ in the bushes, and the moment where Bea and Tessa see one another for the first time, which is shown from both their very different points of view. But mostly it didn’t quite work.
Thursday 25 December 2008
Thanks for the Memories (Cecelia Ahern)***
Joyce’s father, the wonderfully characterised Henry, is doing a quiz, which asks which opera the famous words “Too many notes, Mozart” were describing. “Emperor Joseph II!” Joyce says instantly, and then wonders how she could possibly have known such a thing. It was indeed Emperor Joseph II who said it, but neither Joyce nor Henry seem to notice that the question actually asking for an opera title. There is some dispute about whether the opera in question was The Abduction from the Seraglio or The Marriage of Figaro - Figaro has more notes, but Seraglio was composed first, so the comment could have been made before Figaro came into existence. I’ll go along with The New Penguin Opera Guide and say it was Seraglio. But the answer is definitely not Emperor Joseph II.
The main part of the book is about the sudden feeling of connection between Joyce, who has suffered a miscarriage, and university lecturer Justin. Justin gives blood that is received by Joyce in hospital – and somehow she has accessed his knowledge and memories, and has become an expert on opera, art and languages, among other things. After you get over the sheer unreality of it, it becomes very sweet. There almost-meetings are quite amusing, and there’s a strong feeling that Joyce and Justin would get on well, and be very good for each other.
But they don’t meet, and then it all goes wrong. Suddenly, their interest in each other becomes obsessive and creepy. At this point, the story stops being a sweet romance, and becomes something much more disturbing. Joyce insists she is not stalking Justin, but that’s how it looks. While Justin is more restrained, he certainly breaks the law in his attempts to find Joyce.
I’m sure it’s possible to write a great book about a couple of people who are stalking one another. It’s also possible to write a great book about two people who are magically drawn to one another. The problem is, it’s probably impossible to do both in the same book. From a romance with an element of mystery, magic and, crucially, comedy – common themes in Ahern’s books: see also PS I Love You, A Place Like Here and particularly If You Could See Me Now – it becomes a disturbing psychological drama. I started off wanting Joyce and Justin to meet and get together, but after a while I wanted them to stay well away from each other.
***For a more positive (and brilliantly written) review of this book, visit Amy's blog Fairy Kisses***
Joyce and Justin are good characters in both halves of the book. In the first half, Joyce is lovely and patient and kind. Justin is absolutely adorable: intelligent in a geeky sort of way, but completely hopeless socially. In the second half, they are not unlikeable. There’s no reason why insane people shouldn’t be nice. Actually, some of the nicest people I’ve met have been insane. But you can’t change genre halfway through. Not like this anyway.
The main part of the book is about the sudden feeling of connection between Joyce, who has suffered a miscarriage, and university lecturer Justin. Justin gives blood that is received by Joyce in hospital – and somehow she has accessed his knowledge and memories, and has become an expert on opera, art and languages, among other things. After you get over the sheer unreality of it, it becomes very sweet. There almost-meetings are quite amusing, and there’s a strong feeling that Joyce and Justin would get on well, and be very good for each other.
But they don’t meet, and then it all goes wrong. Suddenly, their interest in each other becomes obsessive and creepy. At this point, the story stops being a sweet romance, and becomes something much more disturbing. Joyce insists she is not stalking Justin, but that’s how it looks. While Justin is more restrained, he certainly breaks the law in his attempts to find Joyce.
I’m sure it’s possible to write a great book about a couple of people who are stalking one another. It’s also possible to write a great book about two people who are magically drawn to one another. The problem is, it’s probably impossible to do both in the same book. From a romance with an element of mystery, magic and, crucially, comedy – common themes in Ahern’s books: see also PS I Love You, A Place Like Here and particularly If You Could See Me Now – it becomes a disturbing psychological drama. I started off wanting Joyce and Justin to meet and get together, but after a while I wanted them to stay well away from each other.
***For a more positive (and brilliantly written) review of this book, visit Amy's blog Fairy Kisses***
Joyce and Justin are good characters in both halves of the book. In the first half, Joyce is lovely and patient and kind. Justin is absolutely adorable: intelligent in a geeky sort of way, but completely hopeless socially. In the second half, they are not unlikeable. There’s no reason why insane people shouldn’t be nice. Actually, some of the nicest people I’ve met have been insane. But you can’t change genre halfway through. Not like this anyway.
Sunday 21 December 2008
An Absolute Scandal (Penny Vincenzi)**
The only scandal is that this book was published in the first place. Oh, there were some bits I loved - Blue Horton is one of the most gorgeous heroes ever – but NO book needs to be this long. It might have worked as a trilogy – it was good enough for Tolkien, after all – but you don’t need this many storylines. I can usually remember who everyone is without referring to a Dramatis Personnae but I practically needed to write notes in order to keep track of who was doing what with whom.
The Blue/Lucinda/Nigel storyline was lovely – no complaints about that one except I wanted Blue for myself. Their story alone would probably have made a novel of reasonable length, and possibly one with five stars instead of two. Lucinda is an adorable, innocent Sloane Ranger who married Nigel because she couldn’t imagine anything could be nicer than marrying someone so kind, gentle, rich and upper class. Then she meets the sexy, working class (but rich) Blue who probably was just after a quick one to start with, but he falls in love with commendable speed and is absolutely lovely apart from being a little bit immature and not very good at controlling his emotions. Just my type.
Married couple Elizabeth and Simon are both very strong and interesting characters. In case you’re wondering, Elizabeth doesn’t have much of a social life - as she realises at the end of the book - but there is something very powerful and commanding about her. You feel that if she wanted a social life, she’d go out and get one right now. Simon has a sex problem. Everyone else goes on about how charming he is and I suppose they’ve got a point, but the thing that really caught my attention about Simon is what a pervert he is. In a likeable sort of way.
Flora Fielding is a matriarchal, magnificently terrifying grandmother, and I did like the way her less than posh daughter-in-law Debbie was allowed to be intelligent – not that she always makes this obvious. Debbie’s heart is in the right place, but she is the sort of person who becomes very irritating after a while, so perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to put her in an 800 page novel. But her husband Richard is such a bossy, toffy prat, I think I’d be a bit whiny as well if I was married to him. (Hang on, I’m a bit whiny already.)
But there must be a good fifteen ‘main’ characters, and I can’t help thinking it would have been a stronger book with a more manageable number of storylines. It's great the way Elizabeth and Simon’s posh daughter Annabel is expelled from school and then decides to be a hairdresser. Brilliant idea. But we didn’t need to hear all about her relationships too. There’s enough going on already, and her boyfriend Jamie is, frankly, boring – although his bonkers snobby mother Frances is so much like someone I know, she ended up being quite funny. Catherine Morgan is clearly a lovely person, and very useful as a plot device, but having her back story as well just made things even more complicated.
Novels with multiple points of view can be fascinating – just some examples from this blog are The Girls, Getting Rid of Matthew, A Hidden Life and The Chocolate Lovers’ Diet. But there are also several unsuccessful examples as well – like Chart Throb, The Nanny and Ten Days in the Hills. On the whole (although certainly not exclusively), the more ‘protagonists’ there are, the less I’ve enjoyed the book. (Yes, I know you can’t really have more than one protagonist, but ‘polyagonist’ sounds silly.) When the characters are quite similar, it’s hard to tell them apart. When they’re very different, it’s difficult not to have favourites, as well as characters you really don’t like – and it’s inevitable this will lead to the frustrations of having too much of those you dislike, and not enough of those you love.
The main plot is based around Lloyd’s of London. Not the bank, apparently: I never did work out quite who they were which apparently means I’m even less intelligent than Lucinda (which is good news in that I might have a chance with Blue). But I think they’re something to do with insurance, and they have ‘syndicates’ of very rich people who receive a share of the money when Lloyd’s is going well, but owe Lloyd’s money when things are going badly. The Names (the members of the syndicate, I think that means) are supposed to be really rich people who can afford to pay several thousand pounds a year if things go badly, but because of some dirty dealing, a lot of the people in the syndicates really can’t afford it – and indeed, even the rich people are struggling, having to sell at least one of their houses, and even being forced to send their children to state school, which is beyond terrible. The Names therefore band together and discuss what they can do about Lloyd’s – apparently, even if they resign from being a Name, they still have to pay the money for the rest of their lives.
It’s all very complicated and rather boring, but the main problem with this idea is that it never seems to be resolved. Most of the ‘polyagonists’ do have their situations resolved in one way or another, and not always in a good way, but it doesn’t solve the problem for everyone. As far as I can see, this means that the efforts to fight Lloyd’s as a group as failed, which is a shame when so much of the plot has been devoted to this. Perhaps this is the realistic ending, and perhaps one of Vincenzi’s points is that there are more important things in life than money, but it is a bit annoying that something so important, at least in the beginning, is never really brought to any sort of conclusion.
Then there’s all the vomiting. Maybe, as an emetophobe, I’m slightly biased against this, but it does seem to happen to almost everyone in the book far more often than is healthy. The morning sickness is, I suppose, acceptable; the stomach bugs are very useful for keeping wives away from their lovers (although I do wish I’d been spared the details), and the drunkenness is certainly amusing to some people, if not me. But the way everyone appears to do it when they get stressed is totally unacceptable. Not only is this extremely uncomfortable reading for emetophobes, it shows a distinct lack of imagination on the part of the author. There are many ways in which people might react to stress, and considering that all Vincenzi’s characters have such different personalities, they should also have different reactions. There was a bit of crying and shaking, which was nice, but a bit more fainting and tantrums and eating chocolate would have made a real difference.
Vincenzi’s lack of imagination also extended to the way the men looked at the women. All the men seemed to be leg men, which really isn’t that realistic. Just because Lucinda and Debbie and Felicity and God knows who else happen to have great legs, it doesn’t mean their legs have to be pretty much their only good feature. There are more leg men in this book than I’ve met in my whole life. I’ve had all kinds of blokey conversations with my guy mates, but I think the closest we’ve got to discussing which girls have the best legs is when we’ve wondered which girls are sufficiently flexible to perform the entire Kama Sutra (apparently, I am).
And then there’s the fact Simon likes ‘popular’ opera. Fair enough, but this seems to include Beethoven and not Mozart. I would expect operas like The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro to count as popular. And Beethoven only wrote one opera, Fidelio, which is hardly ‘easy listening’: it’s got a role for a Heldentenor. It’s not all that popular either.
Also I don’t think there is a McDonalds opposite High Street Kensington. The Tube station in question isn’t mentioned by name, but I’m pretty sure this is the only Tube station near Kensington Gardens which is one stop from the Central Line and ‘on the way to’ Piccadilly Circus – apart from Bayswater, but that’s only five minutes up the road from Queensway (which is on the Central Line, so you’d have to be really stupid to go to Bayswater in those circumstances). But perhaps there was a McDonalds opposite High Street Kensington in 1990.
There are definitely parts of An Absolute Scandal where you want to keep on reading because there are loads of interesting things going on, and you do want to know how things work out. But after a while, you stop getting that excited because the book is so anticlimactic. Vincenzi will often open a paragraph by saying something very dramatic, but after she’s told you that, there’s almost not much point in reading the rest of that section because you know what’s going to happen. Another annoying habit of hers is ending a chapter at a crucial point, but then not going back to those characters for days, even weeks later, when the crisis is long over.
But Blue is in it so I’ll forgive Vincenzi almost everything.
The Blue/Lucinda/Nigel storyline was lovely – no complaints about that one except I wanted Blue for myself. Their story alone would probably have made a novel of reasonable length, and possibly one with five stars instead of two. Lucinda is an adorable, innocent Sloane Ranger who married Nigel because she couldn’t imagine anything could be nicer than marrying someone so kind, gentle, rich and upper class. Then she meets the sexy, working class (but rich) Blue who probably was just after a quick one to start with, but he falls in love with commendable speed and is absolutely lovely apart from being a little bit immature and not very good at controlling his emotions. Just my type.
Married couple Elizabeth and Simon are both very strong and interesting characters. In case you’re wondering, Elizabeth doesn’t have much of a social life - as she realises at the end of the book - but there is something very powerful and commanding about her. You feel that if she wanted a social life, she’d go out and get one right now. Simon has a sex problem. Everyone else goes on about how charming he is and I suppose they’ve got a point, but the thing that really caught my attention about Simon is what a pervert he is. In a likeable sort of way.
Flora Fielding is a matriarchal, magnificently terrifying grandmother, and I did like the way her less than posh daughter-in-law Debbie was allowed to be intelligent – not that she always makes this obvious. Debbie’s heart is in the right place, but she is the sort of person who becomes very irritating after a while, so perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to put her in an 800 page novel. But her husband Richard is such a bossy, toffy prat, I think I’d be a bit whiny as well if I was married to him. (Hang on, I’m a bit whiny already.)
But there must be a good fifteen ‘main’ characters, and I can’t help thinking it would have been a stronger book with a more manageable number of storylines. It's great the way Elizabeth and Simon’s posh daughter Annabel is expelled from school and then decides to be a hairdresser. Brilliant idea. But we didn’t need to hear all about her relationships too. There’s enough going on already, and her boyfriend Jamie is, frankly, boring – although his bonkers snobby mother Frances is so much like someone I know, she ended up being quite funny. Catherine Morgan is clearly a lovely person, and very useful as a plot device, but having her back story as well just made things even more complicated.
Novels with multiple points of view can be fascinating – just some examples from this blog are The Girls, Getting Rid of Matthew, A Hidden Life and The Chocolate Lovers’ Diet. But there are also several unsuccessful examples as well – like Chart Throb, The Nanny and Ten Days in the Hills. On the whole (although certainly not exclusively), the more ‘protagonists’ there are, the less I’ve enjoyed the book. (Yes, I know you can’t really have more than one protagonist, but ‘polyagonist’ sounds silly.) When the characters are quite similar, it’s hard to tell them apart. When they’re very different, it’s difficult not to have favourites, as well as characters you really don’t like – and it’s inevitable this will lead to the frustrations of having too much of those you dislike, and not enough of those you love.
The main plot is based around Lloyd’s of London. Not the bank, apparently: I never did work out quite who they were which apparently means I’m even less intelligent than Lucinda (which is good news in that I might have a chance with Blue). But I think they’re something to do with insurance, and they have ‘syndicates’ of very rich people who receive a share of the money when Lloyd’s is going well, but owe Lloyd’s money when things are going badly. The Names (the members of the syndicate, I think that means) are supposed to be really rich people who can afford to pay several thousand pounds a year if things go badly, but because of some dirty dealing, a lot of the people in the syndicates really can’t afford it – and indeed, even the rich people are struggling, having to sell at least one of their houses, and even being forced to send their children to state school, which is beyond terrible. The Names therefore band together and discuss what they can do about Lloyd’s – apparently, even if they resign from being a Name, they still have to pay the money for the rest of their lives.
It’s all very complicated and rather boring, but the main problem with this idea is that it never seems to be resolved. Most of the ‘polyagonists’ do have their situations resolved in one way or another, and not always in a good way, but it doesn’t solve the problem for everyone. As far as I can see, this means that the efforts to fight Lloyd’s as a group as failed, which is a shame when so much of the plot has been devoted to this. Perhaps this is the realistic ending, and perhaps one of Vincenzi’s points is that there are more important things in life than money, but it is a bit annoying that something so important, at least in the beginning, is never really brought to any sort of conclusion.
Then there’s all the vomiting. Maybe, as an emetophobe, I’m slightly biased against this, but it does seem to happen to almost everyone in the book far more often than is healthy. The morning sickness is, I suppose, acceptable; the stomach bugs are very useful for keeping wives away from their lovers (although I do wish I’d been spared the details), and the drunkenness is certainly amusing to some people, if not me. But the way everyone appears to do it when they get stressed is totally unacceptable. Not only is this extremely uncomfortable reading for emetophobes, it shows a distinct lack of imagination on the part of the author. There are many ways in which people might react to stress, and considering that all Vincenzi’s characters have such different personalities, they should also have different reactions. There was a bit of crying and shaking, which was nice, but a bit more fainting and tantrums and eating chocolate would have made a real difference.
Vincenzi’s lack of imagination also extended to the way the men looked at the women. All the men seemed to be leg men, which really isn’t that realistic. Just because Lucinda and Debbie and Felicity and God knows who else happen to have great legs, it doesn’t mean their legs have to be pretty much their only good feature. There are more leg men in this book than I’ve met in my whole life. I’ve had all kinds of blokey conversations with my guy mates, but I think the closest we’ve got to discussing which girls have the best legs is when we’ve wondered which girls are sufficiently flexible to perform the entire Kama Sutra (apparently, I am).
And then there’s the fact Simon likes ‘popular’ opera. Fair enough, but this seems to include Beethoven and not Mozart. I would expect operas like The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro to count as popular. And Beethoven only wrote one opera, Fidelio, which is hardly ‘easy listening’: it’s got a role for a Heldentenor. It’s not all that popular either.
Also I don’t think there is a McDonalds opposite High Street Kensington. The Tube station in question isn’t mentioned by name, but I’m pretty sure this is the only Tube station near Kensington Gardens which is one stop from the Central Line and ‘on the way to’ Piccadilly Circus – apart from Bayswater, but that’s only five minutes up the road from Queensway (which is on the Central Line, so you’d have to be really stupid to go to Bayswater in those circumstances). But perhaps there was a McDonalds opposite High Street Kensington in 1990.
There are definitely parts of An Absolute Scandal where you want to keep on reading because there are loads of interesting things going on, and you do want to know how things work out. But after a while, you stop getting that excited because the book is so anticlimactic. Vincenzi will often open a paragraph by saying something very dramatic, but after she’s told you that, there’s almost not much point in reading the rest of that section because you know what’s going to happen. Another annoying habit of hers is ending a chapter at a crucial point, but then not going back to those characters for days, even weeks later, when the crisis is long over.
But Blue is in it so I’ll forgive Vincenzi almost everything.
Thursday 18 December 2008
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)***
I love Sophie Kinsella and I love Becky Bloomwood. I love Luke Brandon too, and I want to take him home with me. Anyone who’s read my blog will know how much I love Kinsella and her characters, and anyone who hasn’t read it knows it now.
But, if I’d read the first book in the series first, I don’t know if I would have read the others.
In some ways, it’s exactly the same as the last Shopaholic book I’ve read, Shopaholic Abroad, which I think is the second in the series. Becky (or Rebecca as she’s mostly called in this book: I love the name Rebecca, but it doesn’t suit her) spends loads of money on clothes; gets into serious financial trouble; gets into huge arguments with Luke, then somehow manages to solve her own and Luke’s problems in the most dramatic possible way. Actually, apart from the ‘serious financial trouble’ part, it’s very similar to the other Shopaholic book I’ve read as well: Shopaholic & Baby.
I will read the other ones because I loved the first two I read. And I’m sure it won’t actually matter if all the other stories are very similar. Even now, I want to read more about Becky, and especially more about Luke, and I would actually be disappointed if Kinsella’s next book was called ‘Shopaholic Gets Divorced’ (which would be all about how Luke leaves Becky for a blogging bookaholic called Sophie… me-Sophie not Kinsella) because I really like the relationship between Becky and Luke. ‘Shopaholic Gets Divorced’ would probably end up a bit like Me and Mr Darcy so it’s really best if it stays in my head.
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic was disappointing not because it was the same as all the others. It was disappointing because I was expecting a comedy and got a horror story. There are some amusing moments, but they're not nearly as funny as some of the scenes in Kinsella’s later books, and I never really felt that I was happy for Becky to get away completely with all her lies and financial problems. Also, disappointingly, Kinsella leaves out some of the scenes I was looking forward to reading. Like Becky’s first meeting with Luke. Kinsella shows little of the great rapport between the two characters in this book, usually so brilliantly written (but perhaps yet to be developed). They barely even seemed to like each other. So the ending didn’t seem right at all.
Luke is sweet and lovely, though, and even a little bit useless on at least one occasion. Becky’s friend Suze is great as well – it’s interesting to see how her story starts. In some ways, Suze is the most interesting character in Kinsella’s books because she has a story that develops a little bit more in each book, whereas Becky, in many ways, is always the same person with the same problems.
Some of the lies Becky tells are absolutely dreadful. She could have got Derek Smeath, her poor bank manager, into serious trouble. Either she’s a horrible person or she’s got a really serious psychological condition that needs treatment. The other books were comedy, but this one was actually unsettling to read at times.
But, if I’d read the first book in the series first, I don’t know if I would have read the others.
In some ways, it’s exactly the same as the last Shopaholic book I’ve read, Shopaholic Abroad, which I think is the second in the series. Becky (or Rebecca as she’s mostly called in this book: I love the name Rebecca, but it doesn’t suit her) spends loads of money on clothes; gets into serious financial trouble; gets into huge arguments with Luke, then somehow manages to solve her own and Luke’s problems in the most dramatic possible way. Actually, apart from the ‘serious financial trouble’ part, it’s very similar to the other Shopaholic book I’ve read as well: Shopaholic & Baby.
I will read the other ones because I loved the first two I read. And I’m sure it won’t actually matter if all the other stories are very similar. Even now, I want to read more about Becky, and especially more about Luke, and I would actually be disappointed if Kinsella’s next book was called ‘Shopaholic Gets Divorced’ (which would be all about how Luke leaves Becky for a blogging bookaholic called Sophie… me-Sophie not Kinsella) because I really like the relationship between Becky and Luke. ‘Shopaholic Gets Divorced’ would probably end up a bit like Me and Mr Darcy so it’s really best if it stays in my head.
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic was disappointing not because it was the same as all the others. It was disappointing because I was expecting a comedy and got a horror story. There are some amusing moments, but they're not nearly as funny as some of the scenes in Kinsella’s later books, and I never really felt that I was happy for Becky to get away completely with all her lies and financial problems. Also, disappointingly, Kinsella leaves out some of the scenes I was looking forward to reading. Like Becky’s first meeting with Luke. Kinsella shows little of the great rapport between the two characters in this book, usually so brilliantly written (but perhaps yet to be developed). They barely even seemed to like each other. So the ending didn’t seem right at all.
Luke is sweet and lovely, though, and even a little bit useless on at least one occasion. Becky’s friend Suze is great as well – it’s interesting to see how her story starts. In some ways, Suze is the most interesting character in Kinsella’s books because she has a story that develops a little bit more in each book, whereas Becky, in many ways, is always the same person with the same problems.
Some of the lies Becky tells are absolutely dreadful. She could have got Derek Smeath, her poor bank manager, into serious trouble. Either she’s a horrible person or she’s got a really serious psychological condition that needs treatment. The other books were comedy, but this one was actually unsettling to read at times.
Tuesday 16 December 2008
A Friend Like Henry (Nuala Gardner)****
Stories about autism can be really annoying. Not so much that people get it wrong – and Nuala Gardner doesn’t – but it’s just that books like these are often a neuro-typical (i.e. non-autistic person)’s only source of knowledge about autism. It really annoys me when people make assumptions about me based on a book about someone else. How would you feel if someone did it to you? This book may be helpful and inspiring; it’s undeniably informative; it probably will help a parent with an autistic child to know they’re not alone – and it’s a great read. But it only tells you about Nuala Gardner’s children, Dale and Amy. It doesn’t tell you anything about me, and not a great deal about autistics in general. This isn’t a criticism – I’m just saying no-one should read this book and expect to have the same experiences with any autistics they might meet. (I’ve met soooo many people who expect me to be a carbon copy of the boy in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.)
Gardner isn’t really setting out to educate us about the complete autistic spectrum. She acknowledges the spectrum, but she’s writing about her children. So she quite rightly tells us about their autism and how she experienced it. I think it’s important to realise that not every autistic person will achieve what Dale does, and also that not every parent will be as successful as Nuala. Everyone is different: autistic or not. Everyone’s lives are different. Nuala helped her children successfully partly because she’s a lovely, warm, and amazing person, but also because she happened to be the right person to help Dale and Amy, and because she happened to be in a position where she was able to give that help. Some parents might not be able to achieve what Nuala has, but it mostly won’t be because they’re bad people. It’s possible that some parents might unknowingly treat their children in a way that affects them negatively – but that’s not really treating them badly. Like Nuala and like all other parents, all they can do is their best according to their own knowledge about the world - as autistic people do every day.
This book does seem to support the view that being autistic is like living in a glass box and being unable to get out. As an autistic person myself, I can say it is not like that for me. I spend most of my life partly or fully in Sophieworld because I love it there, and if you’ve got yourself an imaginary friend or two, you’ll never be alone, and you’ll rarely be bored. I don’t think I really live in my Sophiebox. It’s more like I’ve got a little box full of imaginary friends and I can get them out and play with them anytime I want to. If someone upsets me, these friends can give me a hug straight away. They know what’s wrong because they were there the whole time. And they’re much easier to be around than most real people.
Autistics don’t have an imagination? Well, I’ve got one. (My psychology teacher said I don’t really have an imagination, I only think I do. But she also said my exam started at 2.30, and she was wrong about that. It was at 2.) Just because an autistic person doesn’t appear to be playing imaginatively, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole world in their head.
A Friend Like Henry might have annoyed me if it had been badly written – a lot of people are commissioned to write about their experiences simply because a publisher’s heard of them from somewhere, like maybe they’re famous for something else; maybe they’ve appeared on TV or been featured in a magazine or newspaper. When this happens, writing ability doesn’t seem to be much of a concern. But Gardner is a fantastic writer. I don’t know if she realised it at the time, but she wasn’t only letting people into Dale’s world. She was also, to some extent, letting me into the world of being a neuro-typical person. Gardner always makes her points clearly and well – which must be a huge help for Dale and Amy. Everything is described so vividly; so lovingly. Even though a lot of the things she said were negative, I could tell she loves her children.
The people she writes about are really well-described. The horrible people in the health department are probably not people I’ve met, as the book is set in Scotland, but I’ve met people like them. Dale and Amy seem like a really lovely children. I always love finding characters I identify with, and they were people I identified with strongly. He loves trains! She loves horses! It was fun reading the book and finding all these things I do or used to do, although Dale, Amy and I are very different in most respects.
The ‘Henry’ in the title is a dog, named after Dale’s favourite train from Thomas the Tank Engine. He certainly is a wonderful dog, who has helped Dale and his whole family a great deal. Henry is great with autistic people, and also great with people who are generally scared of dogs. But a lot of the credit for Dale and Amy’s positive experiences should go to Nuala and her husband Jamie.
It did upset me when Nuala said ‘what did I do to deserve an autistic child’. It made me feel very guilty and a bit suicidal. But I’d like to look at it another way. Yes, autistic people are an awful lot of trouble (I can be a proper nightmare) but if autistic children have to be born into the world, is it better for them to go to someone as lovely and kind and sweet as Nuala (and my parents aren’t all that bad either) - or to someone who doesn’t understand at all?
This is a great book which I enjoyed very much, and it’s really good that people like Gardner are able to share their experiences, and provide help and encouragement to others.
Gardner isn’t really setting out to educate us about the complete autistic spectrum. She acknowledges the spectrum, but she’s writing about her children. So she quite rightly tells us about their autism and how she experienced it. I think it’s important to realise that not every autistic person will achieve what Dale does, and also that not every parent will be as successful as Nuala. Everyone is different: autistic or not. Everyone’s lives are different. Nuala helped her children successfully partly because she’s a lovely, warm, and amazing person, but also because she happened to be the right person to help Dale and Amy, and because she happened to be in a position where she was able to give that help. Some parents might not be able to achieve what Nuala has, but it mostly won’t be because they’re bad people. It’s possible that some parents might unknowingly treat their children in a way that affects them negatively – but that’s not really treating them badly. Like Nuala and like all other parents, all they can do is their best according to their own knowledge about the world - as autistic people do every day.
This book does seem to support the view that being autistic is like living in a glass box and being unable to get out. As an autistic person myself, I can say it is not like that for me. I spend most of my life partly or fully in Sophieworld because I love it there, and if you’ve got yourself an imaginary friend or two, you’ll never be alone, and you’ll rarely be bored. I don’t think I really live in my Sophiebox. It’s more like I’ve got a little box full of imaginary friends and I can get them out and play with them anytime I want to. If someone upsets me, these friends can give me a hug straight away. They know what’s wrong because they were there the whole time. And they’re much easier to be around than most real people.
Autistics don’t have an imagination? Well, I’ve got one. (My psychology teacher said I don’t really have an imagination, I only think I do. But she also said my exam started at 2.30, and she was wrong about that. It was at 2.) Just because an autistic person doesn’t appear to be playing imaginatively, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole world in their head.
A Friend Like Henry might have annoyed me if it had been badly written – a lot of people are commissioned to write about their experiences simply because a publisher’s heard of them from somewhere, like maybe they’re famous for something else; maybe they’ve appeared on TV or been featured in a magazine or newspaper. When this happens, writing ability doesn’t seem to be much of a concern. But Gardner is a fantastic writer. I don’t know if she realised it at the time, but she wasn’t only letting people into Dale’s world. She was also, to some extent, letting me into the world of being a neuro-typical person. Gardner always makes her points clearly and well – which must be a huge help for Dale and Amy. Everything is described so vividly; so lovingly. Even though a lot of the things she said were negative, I could tell she loves her children.
The people she writes about are really well-described. The horrible people in the health department are probably not people I’ve met, as the book is set in Scotland, but I’ve met people like them. Dale and Amy seem like a really lovely children. I always love finding characters I identify with, and they were people I identified with strongly. He loves trains! She loves horses! It was fun reading the book and finding all these things I do or used to do, although Dale, Amy and I are very different in most respects.
The ‘Henry’ in the title is a dog, named after Dale’s favourite train from Thomas the Tank Engine. He certainly is a wonderful dog, who has helped Dale and his whole family a great deal. Henry is great with autistic people, and also great with people who are generally scared of dogs. But a lot of the credit for Dale and Amy’s positive experiences should go to Nuala and her husband Jamie.
It did upset me when Nuala said ‘what did I do to deserve an autistic child’. It made me feel very guilty and a bit suicidal. But I’d like to look at it another way. Yes, autistic people are an awful lot of trouble (I can be a proper nightmare) but if autistic children have to be born into the world, is it better for them to go to someone as lovely and kind and sweet as Nuala (and my parents aren’t all that bad either) - or to someone who doesn’t understand at all?
This is a great book which I enjoyed very much, and it’s really good that people like Gardner are able to share their experiences, and provide help and encouragement to others.
Saturday 13 December 2008
The Chocolate Lovers' Diet (Carole Matthews)****
Carole Matthews opens The Chocolate Lovers’ Diet by saying I’m a bitch.
Bitches, apparently, are people who can’t eat whole Mars Bars, or more than one square of dark chocolate at a time. That’s definitely me. Half a Mars bar or one square of dark chocolate makes me feel sick. As I have emetophobia, it’s quite a big thing for me to be eating chocolate at all, but I still have about four squares of milk chocolate a day. So I can’t be all that bitchy. (It’s not for weight reasons after all. If I ate a whole bar of chocolate every day, I’d probably get thinner. And then I really would be a bitch.)
Yes, I know I was complaining when Dorothy Koomson’s The Chocolate Run was all about chocolate, but this is different. The way in which Lucy, Chantal, Autumn and Nadia go mad over chocolate seems quite reasonable to me, and the girls do have plenty of other outside interests. There isn’t a surplus of film-talk, and all sex scenes (except those involving Lucy’s parents) are done in the best possible taste.
And you can’t really blame these women for needing quite as much chocolate as they do. When you read it, you’ll see what I mean. Crises seem to follow them around. To work; to their parents’ houses; to their weddings. Some of these crises are hilarious: Matthews is a wonderful comic writer. But she doesn’t get much chance to show it because a lot of this book is quite sad. Just because the central characters are totally insane, particularly Lucy, it’s easy to get caught up into thinking this book is a comedy. And then something awful happens, just when you’re not expecting it, and then it all gets worse and worse.
If you’re looking for realism, this might not be the book for you - but, on the other hand, I usually look for realism, and I loved it. Most authors who try to pull anything even vaguely unrealistic hear all about it from me in this blog. But Matthews gets away with it. Her book is just too much fun (apart from the sad bits) for me to care that they should all have been arrested. Besides, they’ve been through so much, you feel it’s time they had a bit of crazy fun.
The Chocolate Lovers’ Diet has some great characters. It’s a bit hard to imagine how the girls became friends, as chocolate seems to be the only thing they have in common, but it’s very easy to believe they’re genuinely close. Lucy is no more intelligent than you’d expect from a fictional girl with that name, and her boyfriend Aiden shares with Aidan from Anybody Out There the bad habit of disappearing when his girlfriend needs him (although both have a very good reason). Chantal is a surprisingly respectable sex addict; Autumn an upper-class hippie, and Nadia a woman of amazing courage and kindness. But they do care about each other. Even chocolate comes a poor second.
There are sections told from the points of view from all four women, but, unusually, Lucy’s is told in the first person (and in the present tense and the others in the third person (past tense). This did mean I felt closer to Lucy than the other characters, but that wasn’t really a problem. If you met the Chocolate Lovers for real, Lucy is probably the one you’d get close to first. Lucy is the comedy character, providing relief when everyone else’s life is falling apart, and often just failing to notice that her own is doing the same. Without her, Nadia’s, Autumn’s and Chantal’s stories would have been so much darker, and, while it might have been a more powerful book, it wouldn’t have been half as fun. We know that chocolate can’t really cure all these problems, but it’s nice to pretend it does.
Maybe the book gets a bit slushy at the end, but that’s only to be expected when there’s a chocolate fountain spraying everywhere.
This is the second of two books, but I read this one first and it works very well as a stand-alone book.
Bitches, apparently, are people who can’t eat whole Mars Bars, or more than one square of dark chocolate at a time. That’s definitely me. Half a Mars bar or one square of dark chocolate makes me feel sick. As I have emetophobia, it’s quite a big thing for me to be eating chocolate at all, but I still have about four squares of milk chocolate a day. So I can’t be all that bitchy. (It’s not for weight reasons after all. If I ate a whole bar of chocolate every day, I’d probably get thinner. And then I really would be a bitch.)
Yes, I know I was complaining when Dorothy Koomson’s The Chocolate Run was all about chocolate, but this is different. The way in which Lucy, Chantal, Autumn and Nadia go mad over chocolate seems quite reasonable to me, and the girls do have plenty of other outside interests. There isn’t a surplus of film-talk, and all sex scenes (except those involving Lucy’s parents) are done in the best possible taste.
And you can’t really blame these women for needing quite as much chocolate as they do. When you read it, you’ll see what I mean. Crises seem to follow them around. To work; to their parents’ houses; to their weddings. Some of these crises are hilarious: Matthews is a wonderful comic writer. But she doesn’t get much chance to show it because a lot of this book is quite sad. Just because the central characters are totally insane, particularly Lucy, it’s easy to get caught up into thinking this book is a comedy. And then something awful happens, just when you’re not expecting it, and then it all gets worse and worse.
If you’re looking for realism, this might not be the book for you - but, on the other hand, I usually look for realism, and I loved it. Most authors who try to pull anything even vaguely unrealistic hear all about it from me in this blog. But Matthews gets away with it. Her book is just too much fun (apart from the sad bits) for me to care that they should all have been arrested. Besides, they’ve been through so much, you feel it’s time they had a bit of crazy fun.
The Chocolate Lovers’ Diet has some great characters. It’s a bit hard to imagine how the girls became friends, as chocolate seems to be the only thing they have in common, but it’s very easy to believe they’re genuinely close. Lucy is no more intelligent than you’d expect from a fictional girl with that name, and her boyfriend Aiden shares with Aidan from Anybody Out There the bad habit of disappearing when his girlfriend needs him (although both have a very good reason). Chantal is a surprisingly respectable sex addict; Autumn an upper-class hippie, and Nadia a woman of amazing courage and kindness. But they do care about each other. Even chocolate comes a poor second.
There are sections told from the points of view from all four women, but, unusually, Lucy’s is told in the first person (and in the present tense and the others in the third person (past tense). This did mean I felt closer to Lucy than the other characters, but that wasn’t really a problem. If you met the Chocolate Lovers for real, Lucy is probably the one you’d get close to first. Lucy is the comedy character, providing relief when everyone else’s life is falling apart, and often just failing to notice that her own is doing the same. Without her, Nadia’s, Autumn’s and Chantal’s stories would have been so much darker, and, while it might have been a more powerful book, it wouldn’t have been half as fun. We know that chocolate can’t really cure all these problems, but it’s nice to pretend it does.
Maybe the book gets a bit slushy at the end, but that’s only to be expected when there’s a chocolate fountain spraying everywhere.
This is the second of two books, but I read this one first and it works very well as a stand-alone book.
Thursday 11 December 2008
The Chocolate Run (Dorothy Koomson)**
Sex, chocolate and films. Some people would say these are the greatest things in the world, but they’re not enough to make a book. (But at least the presence of chocolate saves this book from being another Ten Days in the Hills.)
However it would be difficult to put anything else in the book when sex, chocolate and films are pretty much all Amber Salpone thinks about. And as for what Amber calls a ‘chocolate run’ (which incidentally is not included in the list of definitions of ‘chocolate run’ provided by Dorothy Koomson at the end of the book), well, it’s a little bit disturbing. I know I’m not in a position to condemn other people for having weird habits but seriously, I hope she washed her hands first.
There are things I like about Amber. I like the fact she doesn’t care if she’s a Size 14/16. I like her humour. It’s not always appropriate, but it’s usually funny. But the way she keeps saying that her friend/lover Greg is a bastard and a tart (can guys be tarts? I think gay men can but Amber’s in trouble if Greg is gay) and not a nice guy is really horrible. Especially since Greg is really incredibly lovely.
Another problem with Amber is that she gets away with things she shouldn’t. Like when she doesn’t do her ‘homework’ for her boss Renée because she was too busy having sex - Renée has a go at her. Perfectly natural, I’d say. Renée had to cancel a meeting because of Amber. But Amber then tells us Renée ‘did the decent thing’ – she cancelled the meeting and brought Amber some Maltesers to make up for snapping at her. It’s not good to shout at people but it’s worse not to do your job properly, and to cause inconvenience to others. It’s possible Renée knows about Amber’s domestic violence past – the past she never talks about – and feels guilty for showing even verbal aggression towards her, but Amber is being paid, and she needs to do her work.
Amber also goes on about how attractive she is. It makes a nice change from the women who go on about how unattractive they are but the more Amber talks about it, the more it seems like conceitedness rather than confidence. It doesn’t help the plot for Amber to say these things. And while we’re on the subject of the things Amber says, why does she say ‘gotten’? I can see how she has picked up ‘owt’ and ‘nowt’ from working in Leeds, but where does the American come from? I did check my A Level English Language books, but ‘gotten’ doesn’t seem to be part of Black English – and while Amber’s English is colloquial, she doesn’t really speak Black English anyway.
Amber is not unconvincing as a character – but she isn’t very likeable. Maybe it would have helped if Greg was a bit more of a bastard and a bit less of a sweet guy with no taste in women – at least Amber’s observations about him would have seemed a bit more reasonable. Amber’s best friend Jen was well-characterised (I couldn’t stand the little bitch), and Renée does seem convincingly French. But Koomson made a mistake when she called Jen’s boyfriend Matt. I was okay with it when he was called Matt, but Amber refers to him just once as ‘Matthew’, and that did it for me. We all know what fictional Matthews are like. ‘He’s got another woman on the go!’ was my immediate thought – and you’ll never guess what.
Although the book is mostly funny, there are also some serious elements. Amber’s fear of domestic violence was disturbing in all the right ways. Koomson writes these parts so powerfully, it doesn’t matter that I don’t much like Amber. No-one deserves that, and her resulting trust issues are more than likely part of the reason why Amber’s such a bitch. However, the domestic violence theme doesn’t seem completely necessary to the plot (although admittedly it is difficult to comment on the plot when I’m not totally sure if there is one). I feel really bad about saying this, but it seems rather as though the domestic violence was put in either for dramatic effect, or to drum up some much-needed sympathy for the protagonist.
But you have to applaud Koomson for giving her protagonist so many imperfections. A lot of people have a bitchy streak, after all. (You only have to read my reviews to find out whether I’ve got one.)
I’ll just add, the other Koomson book I’ve read, My Best Friend’s Girl (review to be posted later), was a lot more enjoyable. It has many of the same elements as The Chocolate Run – child abuse, a not terribly likeable protagonist, trust issues – but My Best Friend’s Girl worked. So read that one instead.
However it would be difficult to put anything else in the book when sex, chocolate and films are pretty much all Amber Salpone thinks about. And as for what Amber calls a ‘chocolate run’ (which incidentally is not included in the list of definitions of ‘chocolate run’ provided by Dorothy Koomson at the end of the book), well, it’s a little bit disturbing. I know I’m not in a position to condemn other people for having weird habits but seriously, I hope she washed her hands first.
There are things I like about Amber. I like the fact she doesn’t care if she’s a Size 14/16. I like her humour. It’s not always appropriate, but it’s usually funny. But the way she keeps saying that her friend/lover Greg is a bastard and a tart (can guys be tarts? I think gay men can but Amber’s in trouble if Greg is gay) and not a nice guy is really horrible. Especially since Greg is really incredibly lovely.
Another problem with Amber is that she gets away with things she shouldn’t. Like when she doesn’t do her ‘homework’ for her boss Renée because she was too busy having sex - Renée has a go at her. Perfectly natural, I’d say. Renée had to cancel a meeting because of Amber. But Amber then tells us Renée ‘did the decent thing’ – she cancelled the meeting and brought Amber some Maltesers to make up for snapping at her. It’s not good to shout at people but it’s worse not to do your job properly, and to cause inconvenience to others. It’s possible Renée knows about Amber’s domestic violence past – the past she never talks about – and feels guilty for showing even verbal aggression towards her, but Amber is being paid, and she needs to do her work.
Amber also goes on about how attractive she is. It makes a nice change from the women who go on about how unattractive they are but the more Amber talks about it, the more it seems like conceitedness rather than confidence. It doesn’t help the plot for Amber to say these things. And while we’re on the subject of the things Amber says, why does she say ‘gotten’? I can see how she has picked up ‘owt’ and ‘nowt’ from working in Leeds, but where does the American come from? I did check my A Level English Language books, but ‘gotten’ doesn’t seem to be part of Black English – and while Amber’s English is colloquial, she doesn’t really speak Black English anyway.
Amber is not unconvincing as a character – but she isn’t very likeable. Maybe it would have helped if Greg was a bit more of a bastard and a bit less of a sweet guy with no taste in women – at least Amber’s observations about him would have seemed a bit more reasonable. Amber’s best friend Jen was well-characterised (I couldn’t stand the little bitch), and Renée does seem convincingly French. But Koomson made a mistake when she called Jen’s boyfriend Matt. I was okay with it when he was called Matt, but Amber refers to him just once as ‘Matthew’, and that did it for me. We all know what fictional Matthews are like. ‘He’s got another woman on the go!’ was my immediate thought – and you’ll never guess what.
Although the book is mostly funny, there are also some serious elements. Amber’s fear of domestic violence was disturbing in all the right ways. Koomson writes these parts so powerfully, it doesn’t matter that I don’t much like Amber. No-one deserves that, and her resulting trust issues are more than likely part of the reason why Amber’s such a bitch. However, the domestic violence theme doesn’t seem completely necessary to the plot (although admittedly it is difficult to comment on the plot when I’m not totally sure if there is one). I feel really bad about saying this, but it seems rather as though the domestic violence was put in either for dramatic effect, or to drum up some much-needed sympathy for the protagonist.
But you have to applaud Koomson for giving her protagonist so many imperfections. A lot of people have a bitchy streak, after all. (You only have to read my reviews to find out whether I’ve got one.)
I’ll just add, the other Koomson book I’ve read, My Best Friend’s Girl (review to be posted later), was a lot more enjoyable. It has many of the same elements as The Chocolate Run – child abuse, a not terribly likeable protagonist, trust issues – but My Best Friend’s Girl worked. So read that one instead.
Friday 5 December 2008
Seeing Me Naked (Liza Palmer)***
Before you get excited, Elisabeth Page has no problems with being literally naked. Almost the first thing she does it to wander into her boyfriend’s kitchen without any clothes on and give the cleaning lady a fright. The book is more about learning to be emotionally naked. Well, it’s supposed to be, but it actually seems to be more about Elisabeth’s attempts not to be a superior bitch.
As you’ve probably guessed, Elisabeth is not the most sympathetic of characters. Like Elizabeth in If You Could See Me Now, she has no social life, Elisabeth/Elizabeth apparently being the standard name for women who don’t have any friends. This characteristic in itself isn’t unappealing. We’ve probably all felt lonely at least once in our lives.
But the reason Elisabeth doesn’t have any friends is probably because she’s a snobby bitch who sneers at everyone she meets. I have no idea why she has such a problem with lovely Margot, who is always so kind to her. And so what if Margot’s friend doesn’t pluck her eyebrows and shaves her legs? Maybe she just has better things to do, like looking after her new baby and being nice to people. When Elisabeth starts talking about what a bitch her workmate Julie is, I did actually end up agreeing with her, but by this time I was rather disinclined to rely on her bitchy judgement.
Elisabeth isn’t the worst person in the book. Her father, Ben, is absolutely dreadful, looking down on Elisabeth because she’s ‘only’ a pastry chef in a top restaurant rather than an award-winning writer like him and her brother. I was interested enough to hope this got resolved in the end, which it did, but I wish it hadn’t happened in the slushiest and most tear-sodden way possible. Maybe the Page family should forget writing and baking, and start solving water shortage problems. I almost began to understand why people use that phrase, usually so inexplicable to an emetophobe, ‘I want to vomit’.
Elisabeth seems to think her life isn’t great, and it certainly isn’t perfect. And, to some extent, it doesn’t matter how good her life seems: if she’s not happy, it’s not the right life for her, and maybe she needs to consider a change. But, having decided she needs a change, great opportunities suddenly start to fall into her lap. She doesn’t have to do anything: they just appear. Maybe I’m just as much of a bitch as she is, but I prefer to see my heroines suffering a bit more, and working a bit harder to make things happen.
Elisabeth meets a guy called Daniel and decides to start an affair with him – even though she has a boyfriend. Yes, her relationship with her boyfriend Will is far from ideal, but it still would have been nice to let Will know she was interested in seeing other people before dragging Daniel into bed.
It would also have been easier to identify with Elisabeth if her relationship with Daniel wasn’t instantly perfect. They have a few problems later on, yes, but it’s a bit surprising Daniel goes along so trustingly with her attempts to seduce him. But Daniels, (see also PS I Love You) are drippy types who fall in love at the drop of a hat and like nothing more than being bossed around. The book says it’s Daniel who helps her to be emotionally naked but Elisabeth seems very much the dominant one.
Then Elisabeth is offered the chance of an alternative job – her own TV cooking show. Of course, her father doesn’t think this is good enough either. But apart from that, it all goes brilliantly. The TV people think she’s adorable. She is a ‘natural’ at speaking to the camera. The book is supposed to be about Elisabeth overcoming her insecurities, but we don’t see many signs of them, and when she does overcome something, she doesn’t really let us in on the process of overcoming it.
But I’m giving this book three stars because Liza Palmer is very funny. You don’t need to like Elisabeth to see the humour in the book. Even though nothing much happens in the first half, there are lots of funny moments, some of which might make you cringe, but in a Shopaholic way, not a Me and Mr Darcy way. Seeing Me Naked is occasionally slow, but not boring, and I did want to know what happened to the characters. There are some great characters you do like and care about – Elisabeth’s brother Rascal (brilliant name, although he’s so sappy, it hardly suits him); her fellow chef Samuel, and, of course, his endlessly kind and friendly wife Margot.
Palmer also deserves credit for not making too much of the fact that both Rascal and Ben are novelists, although Ben’s view that novel-writing is the most superior career of all is something I hope Palmer doesn’t believe herself.
Another strength of this book is that Palmer manages to make cooking seem interesting and creative. Now I don’t dislike cooking, I’m just a bit slow at it and I’m a bit scared I might poison myself because I keep getting confused between the cooking oil and the washing up liquid. However, this didn’t stop me from wondering vaguely if I’d enjoy pastry-making. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t, and I know I’d be terrible at it, but it seemed quite interesting when I was reading the book.
As you’ve probably guessed, Elisabeth is not the most sympathetic of characters. Like Elizabeth in If You Could See Me Now, she has no social life, Elisabeth/Elizabeth apparently being the standard name for women who don’t have any friends. This characteristic in itself isn’t unappealing. We’ve probably all felt lonely at least once in our lives.
But the reason Elisabeth doesn’t have any friends is probably because she’s a snobby bitch who sneers at everyone she meets. I have no idea why she has such a problem with lovely Margot, who is always so kind to her. And so what if Margot’s friend doesn’t pluck her eyebrows and shaves her legs? Maybe she just has better things to do, like looking after her new baby and being nice to people. When Elisabeth starts talking about what a bitch her workmate Julie is, I did actually end up agreeing with her, but by this time I was rather disinclined to rely on her bitchy judgement.
Elisabeth isn’t the worst person in the book. Her father, Ben, is absolutely dreadful, looking down on Elisabeth because she’s ‘only’ a pastry chef in a top restaurant rather than an award-winning writer like him and her brother. I was interested enough to hope this got resolved in the end, which it did, but I wish it hadn’t happened in the slushiest and most tear-sodden way possible. Maybe the Page family should forget writing and baking, and start solving water shortage problems. I almost began to understand why people use that phrase, usually so inexplicable to an emetophobe, ‘I want to vomit’.
Elisabeth seems to think her life isn’t great, and it certainly isn’t perfect. And, to some extent, it doesn’t matter how good her life seems: if she’s not happy, it’s not the right life for her, and maybe she needs to consider a change. But, having decided she needs a change, great opportunities suddenly start to fall into her lap. She doesn’t have to do anything: they just appear. Maybe I’m just as much of a bitch as she is, but I prefer to see my heroines suffering a bit more, and working a bit harder to make things happen.
Elisabeth meets a guy called Daniel and decides to start an affair with him – even though she has a boyfriend. Yes, her relationship with her boyfriend Will is far from ideal, but it still would have been nice to let Will know she was interested in seeing other people before dragging Daniel into bed.
It would also have been easier to identify with Elisabeth if her relationship with Daniel wasn’t instantly perfect. They have a few problems later on, yes, but it’s a bit surprising Daniel goes along so trustingly with her attempts to seduce him. But Daniels, (see also PS I Love You) are drippy types who fall in love at the drop of a hat and like nothing more than being bossed around. The book says it’s Daniel who helps her to be emotionally naked but Elisabeth seems very much the dominant one.
Then Elisabeth is offered the chance of an alternative job – her own TV cooking show. Of course, her father doesn’t think this is good enough either. But apart from that, it all goes brilliantly. The TV people think she’s adorable. She is a ‘natural’ at speaking to the camera. The book is supposed to be about Elisabeth overcoming her insecurities, but we don’t see many signs of them, and when she does overcome something, she doesn’t really let us in on the process of overcoming it.
But I’m giving this book three stars because Liza Palmer is very funny. You don’t need to like Elisabeth to see the humour in the book. Even though nothing much happens in the first half, there are lots of funny moments, some of which might make you cringe, but in a Shopaholic way, not a Me and Mr Darcy way. Seeing Me Naked is occasionally slow, but not boring, and I did want to know what happened to the characters. There are some great characters you do like and care about – Elisabeth’s brother Rascal (brilliant name, although he’s so sappy, it hardly suits him); her fellow chef Samuel, and, of course, his endlessly kind and friendly wife Margot.
Palmer also deserves credit for not making too much of the fact that both Rascal and Ben are novelists, although Ben’s view that novel-writing is the most superior career of all is something I hope Palmer doesn’t believe herself.
Another strength of this book is that Palmer manages to make cooking seem interesting and creative. Now I don’t dislike cooking, I’m just a bit slow at it and I’m a bit scared I might poison myself because I keep getting confused between the cooking oil and the washing up liquid. However, this didn’t stop me from wondering vaguely if I’d enjoy pastry-making. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t, and I know I’d be terrible at it, but it seemed quite interesting when I was reading the book.
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