I’ve always admired Louise Bagshawe’s writing style but haven’t particularly enjoyed her books so I was thrilled to find Sparkles. In some ways, it has a lot of similarities with the other Louise Bagshawe books I’ve read. Like Lucy in Tuesday’s Child, Sophie has to learn to be a lady (although we only really see her nonladylike self in flashbacks) and like Lita and Becky in When She was Bad, Sophie finds herself in charge of a business. She’s never done anything like it before but she discovers she has a real knack for it.
But in this book, everything really works. Bagshawe has created a fascinating and exciting multi-layered story, full of twists and turns you almost never see coming. Her characters are also great. Sophie at first seems a bit distant and too concerned with keeping up her aristocratic appearance but the more you read, the more you get to know the vulnerable and sexy woman inside.
Also with a big part to play in the book is Sophie’s son Tom, who is spending his university days shagging and failing his classes (so in other words he’s a completely normal student). But when he fears for the safety of his inheritance he decides to come home and take charge. In the process, he meets Judy, once Sophie’s husband’s secret (at least as far as Sophie was concerned) lover, who is now showing an interest in Tom.
Judy is a complete bitch who likes to tell herself she only cares about being rich but it’s very difficult to hate her. No matter what she does, it’s difficult not to sympathise with her and also to admire her determination and inventiveness. And I smiled more than once when she found herself accidentally being really nice to Sophie. Judy is a great villain because you want her plans to be thwarted but you do kind of want her to end up as happy as she can be without making the other characters suffer.
At the beginning of the book, all Hugh really wants is to buy Sophie’s business but he too turns out to be someone completely different from what I was expecting. He has a business of his own and he always works really hard at it but gradually he realises there are more important things in life.
Then there are scenes featuring the mysterious and murderous Vladek, who is in some way connected to the stories in ways we can partly guess – although you don’t realise the full extent of this until the end of the book. At one point he changes his name to Yuri and this is how his girlfriend refers to him but my friend told me that calling someone Yuri is like calling someone by their first name and surname in English so Yuri’s lover should really call him Yura. But maybe I misunderstood and in any case, Vladek/Yuri is a bit weird so maybe Bagshawe was being really clever and making him get it wrong on purpose.
This is a wonderfully written book, with beautiful, evocative descriptions and exciting dialogue. Maybe it’s not a book I’ll read again but it’s a book I’ll remember – and maybe that’s more important.
Saturday 18 December 2010
Monday 29 November 2010
A Minor Indiscretion (Carole Matthews)***
Ali has been married to Ed for years and she’s always thought she was happy. But when handsome young artist Christian falls in love with her, she’s more than a little bit flattered. Christian is nearly young enough to be her son yet he makes her feel beautiful and loved.
When Ed finds out, he’s just a little bit miffed and kicks Ali out - although one benefit of the new arrangement is that at least he doesn’t have to be quite so embarrassed about his own feelings for his scary workmate Orla. And come to think about it, his youngest son Elliott’s nursery school teacher Nicola is kind of hot too.
Meanwhile Ali sets up home with Christian and his young housemates Robbie and Rebecca, who happens to be Christian’s ex-girlfriend. Christian is kind and sweet and attentive and although he is just a big kid, he does make Ali feel very happy. In addition, Ed’s brother Neil is trying and failing to chat up Ali’s sister Jemma, even though she prefers married men.
In many ways, this book was great. I love the idea of a thirty-eight year old mother of three sharing a house with her toy boy and his mates. I also love how all the single woman around seem to be throwing themselves at Ed now he’s newly single. It was also quite hilarious the way Neil and Jemma clearly liked each other a lot but keep fucking things up.
But I wanted to see more. I wanted to see more of Ali trying her best to get on with Robbie and Rebecca, two people who are completely unlike her, rather than just telling us that Robbie was okay and Rebecca was a bitch. I actually thought Rebecca was mostly amazingly nice to her under the circumstances. How would you feel if you were woken up in the middle of the night by the girlfriend of the man you love needing a place to stay? I think it says a lot for Rebecca that she didn’t kick her out onto the street there and then.
It’s an amazing and original situation with the potential to be really hilarious, as well as giving some very different people the chance to get to know and learn to appreciate each other. But there just wasn’t enough of the parts of the book that interested me most. The book does have some absolutely hilarious moments but I couldn’t help feeling that Carole Matthews missed an opportunity here.
Then towards the end, something really major and shocking and life-changing happens and in a way it spoiled the book. First of all, this book is a comedy – it has some underlying serious messages in it but on the surface, it’s a very funny comedy. So to bring this big event in near the end seemed really inappropriate and strange when you’ve spent five-sixths of the book laughing.
Secondly, this big event is key in helping the characters to decide what they want from life. This is fine and realistic. But I kind of feel the end of the book should be about the characters’ working out what they really want and although it’s not unrealistic that it should take something really major to help them decide this, it does in a way make everything else in the book irrelevant. This big event means it doesn’t matter what they’ve learned about themselves and other people. All that matters in the end is who copes best in a crisis. And I don’t see what that’s got to do with deciding whom you really love. There’s no way I’m dumping my boyfriend for someone competent.
Even if I agree with how things stand at the end of this book (which to be honest I’m not completely sure I do), I’m sure there must have been a way of working things out that was more convincing, more satisfying and more in keeping with the tone of the rest of the book. And if Matthews wanted something big and dramatic, maybe she could have made the story into a serious story instead of a comedy. It was like something terrible was happening and I was still waiting for the punchline.
Not many of the characters were likeable but I did find them interesting. Ali seemed a bit moany and obsessive and embarrassing but I genuinely wanted things to work out for her and I was interested in how she was going to make changes in her life. Matthews’ writing ensured that even though she was unfaithful pretty much from the start, she wasn’t the villain of the piece. She was just feeling lonely and unloved and then she met someone who made sure she didn’t feel that way anymore.
Ed was even worse. I really feel for the poor kids. He seemed desperate to prove his masculinity and the way he treats Orla and Nicola (and Ali) just isn’t very nice. It doesn’t matter how forceful and determined to get into his pants Orla and Nicola are (in very different ways), it’s still not very nice of him to shag both of them. At least Ali waited until Ed had thrown her out before jumping into bed (or rather into the bath) with Christian. But it was interesting watching Ed trying to work out which one he liked best. It seemed like he changed his mind all the time. Maybe Matthews had to write him this way in order to ensure that Ali didn’t look bad but it was hard to sympathise with him much – although he was certainly very amusing.
Christian was just adorable. He’s sweet and well-meaning but a bit useless. He does do some awful things (really quite seriously awful, not to mention illegal) and he does seem scarily immature for a twenty-three year old, even by my standards. He seems more like a sixteen year old, maybe even younger, who wants to be a grown-up and in some ways has a more grown-up outlook than most people his age but stick him in the grown-up world and he doesn’t have a clue. But his feelings for Ali seem warm, genuine and romantic. He tries really hard to make her happy. It’s just at the same time he’s trying equally hard to make himself happy.
But my favourite character, Sharon, was hardly in it. She was the tart Christian met at the nightclub on the same night that Ali was thrown out by Ed. Sharon is just so amazingly nice and caring. She just wants something to eat and it isn’t even her house but she can tell Ali’s upset so she asks if she’s okay and offers to make her a cup of tea. Even when she realises Ali is essentially her rival for Christian’s affections, Sharon is still really nice to her. And why shouldn’t she be? Nice people come in all shapes and sizes, including as little slags. The other characters in this book could learn a lot from her. And so could I.
It’s funny how little things can annoy you in a book – and often it’s not the writer’s fault at all. At one point, Matthews referred to ‘a turn of turtles’ and I got really excited because I happen to know the collective noun for turtles is a bale of turtles. But I looked it up on Google just in case and unfortunately turn and bale are both correct. So instead of showing off how clever I am for knowing the real collective noun for turtles, I instead look ignorant for only knowing one of the terms. And that’s even more annoying than someone getting it wrong.
When Ed finds out, he’s just a little bit miffed and kicks Ali out - although one benefit of the new arrangement is that at least he doesn’t have to be quite so embarrassed about his own feelings for his scary workmate Orla. And come to think about it, his youngest son Elliott’s nursery school teacher Nicola is kind of hot too.
Meanwhile Ali sets up home with Christian and his young housemates Robbie and Rebecca, who happens to be Christian’s ex-girlfriend. Christian is kind and sweet and attentive and although he is just a big kid, he does make Ali feel very happy. In addition, Ed’s brother Neil is trying and failing to chat up Ali’s sister Jemma, even though she prefers married men.
In many ways, this book was great. I love the idea of a thirty-eight year old mother of three sharing a house with her toy boy and his mates. I also love how all the single woman around seem to be throwing themselves at Ed now he’s newly single. It was also quite hilarious the way Neil and Jemma clearly liked each other a lot but keep fucking things up.
But I wanted to see more. I wanted to see more of Ali trying her best to get on with Robbie and Rebecca, two people who are completely unlike her, rather than just telling us that Robbie was okay and Rebecca was a bitch. I actually thought Rebecca was mostly amazingly nice to her under the circumstances. How would you feel if you were woken up in the middle of the night by the girlfriend of the man you love needing a place to stay? I think it says a lot for Rebecca that she didn’t kick her out onto the street there and then.
It’s an amazing and original situation with the potential to be really hilarious, as well as giving some very different people the chance to get to know and learn to appreciate each other. But there just wasn’t enough of the parts of the book that interested me most. The book does have some absolutely hilarious moments but I couldn’t help feeling that Carole Matthews missed an opportunity here.
Then towards the end, something really major and shocking and life-changing happens and in a way it spoiled the book. First of all, this book is a comedy – it has some underlying serious messages in it but on the surface, it’s a very funny comedy. So to bring this big event in near the end seemed really inappropriate and strange when you’ve spent five-sixths of the book laughing.
Secondly, this big event is key in helping the characters to decide what they want from life. This is fine and realistic. But I kind of feel the end of the book should be about the characters’ working out what they really want and although it’s not unrealistic that it should take something really major to help them decide this, it does in a way make everything else in the book irrelevant. This big event means it doesn’t matter what they’ve learned about themselves and other people. All that matters in the end is who copes best in a crisis. And I don’t see what that’s got to do with deciding whom you really love. There’s no way I’m dumping my boyfriend for someone competent.
Even if I agree with how things stand at the end of this book (which to be honest I’m not completely sure I do), I’m sure there must have been a way of working things out that was more convincing, more satisfying and more in keeping with the tone of the rest of the book. And if Matthews wanted something big and dramatic, maybe she could have made the story into a serious story instead of a comedy. It was like something terrible was happening and I was still waiting for the punchline.
Not many of the characters were likeable but I did find them interesting. Ali seemed a bit moany and obsessive and embarrassing but I genuinely wanted things to work out for her and I was interested in how she was going to make changes in her life. Matthews’ writing ensured that even though she was unfaithful pretty much from the start, she wasn’t the villain of the piece. She was just feeling lonely and unloved and then she met someone who made sure she didn’t feel that way anymore.
Ed was even worse. I really feel for the poor kids. He seemed desperate to prove his masculinity and the way he treats Orla and Nicola (and Ali) just isn’t very nice. It doesn’t matter how forceful and determined to get into his pants Orla and Nicola are (in very different ways), it’s still not very nice of him to shag both of them. At least Ali waited until Ed had thrown her out before jumping into bed (or rather into the bath) with Christian. But it was interesting watching Ed trying to work out which one he liked best. It seemed like he changed his mind all the time. Maybe Matthews had to write him this way in order to ensure that Ali didn’t look bad but it was hard to sympathise with him much – although he was certainly very amusing.
Christian was just adorable. He’s sweet and well-meaning but a bit useless. He does do some awful things (really quite seriously awful, not to mention illegal) and he does seem scarily immature for a twenty-three year old, even by my standards. He seems more like a sixteen year old, maybe even younger, who wants to be a grown-up and in some ways has a more grown-up outlook than most people his age but stick him in the grown-up world and he doesn’t have a clue. But his feelings for Ali seem warm, genuine and romantic. He tries really hard to make her happy. It’s just at the same time he’s trying equally hard to make himself happy.
But my favourite character, Sharon, was hardly in it. She was the tart Christian met at the nightclub on the same night that Ali was thrown out by Ed. Sharon is just so amazingly nice and caring. She just wants something to eat and it isn’t even her house but she can tell Ali’s upset so she asks if she’s okay and offers to make her a cup of tea. Even when she realises Ali is essentially her rival for Christian’s affections, Sharon is still really nice to her. And why shouldn’t she be? Nice people come in all shapes and sizes, including as little slags. The other characters in this book could learn a lot from her. And so could I.
It’s funny how little things can annoy you in a book – and often it’s not the writer’s fault at all. At one point, Matthews referred to ‘a turn of turtles’ and I got really excited because I happen to know the collective noun for turtles is a bale of turtles. But I looked it up on Google just in case and unfortunately turn and bale are both correct. So instead of showing off how clever I am for knowing the real collective noun for turtles, I instead look ignorant for only knowing one of the terms. And that’s even more annoying than someone getting it wrong.
Thursday 4 November 2010
Birthday Girls (Annabel Giles)****
So I've failed slightly at posting every Sunday without fail...
This is a very cleverly-written and interesting book with a most unfortunate opening sentence which even more unfortunately comes true. In detail. Let’s put it this way, if I’d read the opening sentence in the shop, I would not have bought it. Emetophobes beware.
Birthday Girls follows the story of six women on their birthdays, ranging from ten-year-old Scarlett to Constance, who is sixty. They don’t all have their birthday on the same day but it follows the six woman over the course of just over a year so Scarlett is eleven by the end of the book. Four of them are in one family, the other two are from a different family but one of the male characters is sleeping with a woman from each family so they’re all kind of related in ways they discover as the book progresses. They also have various acquaintances in common – it’s quite fun when various minor characters start popping up in different places.
The book is divided up into sections with each section taking place on a particular person’s birthday. Most of each section is told from the point of view of the birthday girl although by the time you get to the final section, which tells you about Constance’s birthday, the POV jumps about a bit more as all the stories gradually resolve themselves.
It’s a really interesting way of telling a story and it’s also one that works perfectly well for the story – or stories – Annabel Giles tells. I don’t know if the idea for the plot or the narrative structure came first – often when the narrative structure is the first idea, it can be difficult finding a story to fit it and when the plot comes first, it can be equally difficult to shoehorn it all into something with such a rigid structure. But the two fit really well together.
I also like the characters. They’re all so completely different and in some ways they live in different worlds but the connections between the characters are still convincing. Scarlett can be a bit annoying (she’s a bit young and cute) but I really liked the other characters. Some people might find Sophie a bit weak, wet and embarrassing, Della certainly has her bitchy side, Constance seems a bit mad and Millicent, until you know the full story, can seem very stupid, desperate and a bit of a doormat, in a snobby sort of way (if you can imagine such a thing). As for Jessica, she is a bit of a sad wannabe and no-one in the book seems to like her.
But I really liked all of them. Even Scarlett isn’t that bad. Sophie is sweet and loving, and very brave in her way. Della’s determined independence is both admirable and moving because you can tell she’s hurting under the surface. Constance is quite mad but delightfully intrepid and with-it. Millicent is an amazing woman, with great strength, intelligence, courage and patience. And I had a lot of sympathy for Jessica, who finally has to accept she’s not a big star who’s loved by millions. It’s a very sad story and I always felt she was more a victim of circumstances than actually being a horrible person. It’s like being a star was all she knew how to do.
There are problems with the book. Sometimes the birthdays can end on a bit of a cliffhanger and you might never find out what happened next because the story has jumped forward a few months and while the event was hugely important at the time, it has paled into insignificance by then. Also the big final twist at the end was something I saw coming a mile off. I think if I’d worked it out very near the end, it might have had more impact but as it was, I had enough time to come to the conclusion that it was far too coincidental that things worked out as they did and it was a bit of a soap-opera moment and the book might have been stronger without it.
I did enjoy it though.
This is a very cleverly-written and interesting book with a most unfortunate opening sentence which even more unfortunately comes true. In detail. Let’s put it this way, if I’d read the opening sentence in the shop, I would not have bought it. Emetophobes beware.
Birthday Girls follows the story of six women on their birthdays, ranging from ten-year-old Scarlett to Constance, who is sixty. They don’t all have their birthday on the same day but it follows the six woman over the course of just over a year so Scarlett is eleven by the end of the book. Four of them are in one family, the other two are from a different family but one of the male characters is sleeping with a woman from each family so they’re all kind of related in ways they discover as the book progresses. They also have various acquaintances in common – it’s quite fun when various minor characters start popping up in different places.
The book is divided up into sections with each section taking place on a particular person’s birthday. Most of each section is told from the point of view of the birthday girl although by the time you get to the final section, which tells you about Constance’s birthday, the POV jumps about a bit more as all the stories gradually resolve themselves.
It’s a really interesting way of telling a story and it’s also one that works perfectly well for the story – or stories – Annabel Giles tells. I don’t know if the idea for the plot or the narrative structure came first – often when the narrative structure is the first idea, it can be difficult finding a story to fit it and when the plot comes first, it can be equally difficult to shoehorn it all into something with such a rigid structure. But the two fit really well together.
I also like the characters. They’re all so completely different and in some ways they live in different worlds but the connections between the characters are still convincing. Scarlett can be a bit annoying (she’s a bit young and cute) but I really liked the other characters. Some people might find Sophie a bit weak, wet and embarrassing, Della certainly has her bitchy side, Constance seems a bit mad and Millicent, until you know the full story, can seem very stupid, desperate and a bit of a doormat, in a snobby sort of way (if you can imagine such a thing). As for Jessica, she is a bit of a sad wannabe and no-one in the book seems to like her.
But I really liked all of them. Even Scarlett isn’t that bad. Sophie is sweet and loving, and very brave in her way. Della’s determined independence is both admirable and moving because you can tell she’s hurting under the surface. Constance is quite mad but delightfully intrepid and with-it. Millicent is an amazing woman, with great strength, intelligence, courage and patience. And I had a lot of sympathy for Jessica, who finally has to accept she’s not a big star who’s loved by millions. It’s a very sad story and I always felt she was more a victim of circumstances than actually being a horrible person. It’s like being a star was all she knew how to do.
There are problems with the book. Sometimes the birthdays can end on a bit of a cliffhanger and you might never find out what happened next because the story has jumped forward a few months and while the event was hugely important at the time, it has paled into insignificance by then. Also the big final twist at the end was something I saw coming a mile off. I think if I’d worked it out very near the end, it might have had more impact but as it was, I had enough time to come to the conclusion that it was far too coincidental that things worked out as they did and it was a bit of a soap-opera moment and the book might have been stronger without it.
I did enjoy it though.
Monday 18 October 2010
The Wedding Day (Catherine Alliott)***
Catherine Alliott is brilliant about writing comedies about rather stupid women and also brilliant at writing stories that really make you feel for the characters. But I’ve read three of her books now and all her characters seem fairly similar. The stupid heroine is in love with one man but then she meets another man who’s really horrible to her, then she starts having feelings for him instead. Actually, it’s the plot of pretty much any Mills & Boon although Alliott’s writing is a million times better than most Mills & Boon writers. So it is possible to read a number of books with exactly the same plot without getting fed up with it. But with this book, I found myself wishing for a bit of variation.
It’s not as though Alliott can’t do character. In this book especially, she has some great secondary characters. Annie, the central character, and her fiancé David might lack originality but David has a wonderfully mad and vague but terrifying and formidable aunt called Gertrude. Annie’s older sister Claire is always busy, bossy and competitive, just the sort of person I’d usually find really annoying but Alliott gives her a surprising vulnerability. The publisher who is interested in Annie’s book doesn’t appear in person but he’s a great character too. Then there are various friends and neighbours who are fascinating and amusing and Alliott takes the story off on endless twists and turns. And even when you know just where the story is going, she often throws in a surprise.
I also liked Annie’s ex-husband Adam. He does have a bit of a maturity problem (not to mention a fidelity problem) and you can’t blame Annie at all for leaving him - you actually kind of wonder why she didn’t do it sooner. But I did kind of feel he had some good qualities and I really wanted him to learn from his mistakes and end up happy, although maybe not with Annie. He was the first character in the book I really cared for and wanted to know more about. Some of the other major characters at that point seemed like lost causes and Adam didn’t… although I think Annie would argue with that.
Other characters however don’t quite work. Annie’s daughter Flora is a strange mixture of a stroppy teenager, a very young child and an adult. In some ways, this is completely realistic as everyone has different sides to their personality and there are times when you feel young and times when you feel old (not that I’ve ever felt old). But the different parts of Flora don’t quite form a coherent whole.
Annie, David, and Matt (Annie’s Other Man) don’t quite work for me either. The problem is that Annie is a bit unhinged. There’s nothing wrong with being a bit unhinged but I found it slightly worrying that she was getting married. She hardly seems to know David, she has little or no interest in the wedding (although she has somehow managed to convince herself she can’t wait) and seems to have no idea what she’s getting into. I felt as though I was older than her (she’s in her thirties so she’s much older than me) and that freaked me out a bit. I’m not used to going around feeling older than people. It always worries me to find someone, even in a book, who is considered a capable and responsible adult (unlike me) yet is obviously in need of someone to take care of them, be it temporarily or permanently. I really wanted to find Annie, look after her a bit and sort her head out. (Annie is probably now feeling very glad she doesn’t exist.)
This book also includes something I really hate to find in books. No, I don’t mean vomit although there is some and it wasn’t very nice but it could have been worse. What I also really hate is when one (or more) of the characters in the book is a writer and you have to read their work. Alliott makes us read some of Annie’s book. It is so cringe-makingly awful, it should probably be quite funny but the fact a publisher is interested in the book kind of spoils the effect. And there’s definitely a bit too much of it. But it is very cleverly done and there is a reason why Alliott makes you read it so I suppose she gets away with it.
David seemed like a perfectly lovely man but I didn’t really know what he was doing hanging around with this madwoman, let alone planning to marry her. He’s a doctor so I thought he must be setting himself up as her carer or something. Alliott does address this so she gets away with that too but it’s a good thing the book isn’t any longer. Towards the end of the book, you understand why Alliott has done certain things that just don’t make sense at first but until I found out why, I found these parts of the book very annoying.
As for Matt, he seems a little bit creepy. I can’t blame him for sneaking into Annie’s holiday home in the middle of the night, he did honestly think it was his holiday home. But shouting at Annie, getting her name wrong on purpose in insulting ways and trying to force her and her teenage daughter to leave the house immediately and go to an expensive hotel seems a bit much. Annie forgives him (she’s way too nice, she lets people walk all over her) but I still haven’t.
Alliott writes so well though, it was impossible not to become emotionally involved in the story, even though it took me a while and I might have given up on it if a) I didn’t have a blog or b) I didn’t know from experience that Alliott is such an emotionally involving writer. I wasn’t happy at all with the ending, it actually seemed completely wrong, if not dangerous and I really think Annie is in serious trouble. But if you ignore the last couple of chapters, the book would have a really exciting and interesting ending. The way Annie gets to know the characters in ways she hasn’t been able to before, the way she finds out about and comes face to face with their innermost secrets, the way she really does seem to learn from the experience and grow up a bit, made this book a (mostly) really moving and satisfying read.
It’s not as though Alliott can’t do character. In this book especially, she has some great secondary characters. Annie, the central character, and her fiancé David might lack originality but David has a wonderfully mad and vague but terrifying and formidable aunt called Gertrude. Annie’s older sister Claire is always busy, bossy and competitive, just the sort of person I’d usually find really annoying but Alliott gives her a surprising vulnerability. The publisher who is interested in Annie’s book doesn’t appear in person but he’s a great character too. Then there are various friends and neighbours who are fascinating and amusing and Alliott takes the story off on endless twists and turns. And even when you know just where the story is going, she often throws in a surprise.
I also liked Annie’s ex-husband Adam. He does have a bit of a maturity problem (not to mention a fidelity problem) and you can’t blame Annie at all for leaving him - you actually kind of wonder why she didn’t do it sooner. But I did kind of feel he had some good qualities and I really wanted him to learn from his mistakes and end up happy, although maybe not with Annie. He was the first character in the book I really cared for and wanted to know more about. Some of the other major characters at that point seemed like lost causes and Adam didn’t… although I think Annie would argue with that.
Other characters however don’t quite work. Annie’s daughter Flora is a strange mixture of a stroppy teenager, a very young child and an adult. In some ways, this is completely realistic as everyone has different sides to their personality and there are times when you feel young and times when you feel old (not that I’ve ever felt old). But the different parts of Flora don’t quite form a coherent whole.
Annie, David, and Matt (Annie’s Other Man) don’t quite work for me either. The problem is that Annie is a bit unhinged. There’s nothing wrong with being a bit unhinged but I found it slightly worrying that she was getting married. She hardly seems to know David, she has little or no interest in the wedding (although she has somehow managed to convince herself she can’t wait) and seems to have no idea what she’s getting into. I felt as though I was older than her (she’s in her thirties so she’s much older than me) and that freaked me out a bit. I’m not used to going around feeling older than people. It always worries me to find someone, even in a book, who is considered a capable and responsible adult (unlike me) yet is obviously in need of someone to take care of them, be it temporarily or permanently. I really wanted to find Annie, look after her a bit and sort her head out. (Annie is probably now feeling very glad she doesn’t exist.)
This book also includes something I really hate to find in books. No, I don’t mean vomit although there is some and it wasn’t very nice but it could have been worse. What I also really hate is when one (or more) of the characters in the book is a writer and you have to read their work. Alliott makes us read some of Annie’s book. It is so cringe-makingly awful, it should probably be quite funny but the fact a publisher is interested in the book kind of spoils the effect. And there’s definitely a bit too much of it. But it is very cleverly done and there is a reason why Alliott makes you read it so I suppose she gets away with it.
David seemed like a perfectly lovely man but I didn’t really know what he was doing hanging around with this madwoman, let alone planning to marry her. He’s a doctor so I thought he must be setting himself up as her carer or something. Alliott does address this so she gets away with that too but it’s a good thing the book isn’t any longer. Towards the end of the book, you understand why Alliott has done certain things that just don’t make sense at first but until I found out why, I found these parts of the book very annoying.
As for Matt, he seems a little bit creepy. I can’t blame him for sneaking into Annie’s holiday home in the middle of the night, he did honestly think it was his holiday home. But shouting at Annie, getting her name wrong on purpose in insulting ways and trying to force her and her teenage daughter to leave the house immediately and go to an expensive hotel seems a bit much. Annie forgives him (she’s way too nice, she lets people walk all over her) but I still haven’t.
Alliott writes so well though, it was impossible not to become emotionally involved in the story, even though it took me a while and I might have given up on it if a) I didn’t have a blog or b) I didn’t know from experience that Alliott is such an emotionally involving writer. I wasn’t happy at all with the ending, it actually seemed completely wrong, if not dangerous and I really think Annie is in serious trouble. But if you ignore the last couple of chapters, the book would have a really exciting and interesting ending. The way Annie gets to know the characters in ways she hasn’t been able to before, the way she finds out about and comes face to face with their innermost secrets, the way she really does seem to learn from the experience and grow up a bit, made this book a (mostly) really moving and satisfying read.
Sunday 10 October 2010
On Chesil Beach (Iain McEwan)****
I hated Atonement so much, I was reluctant to give Ian McEwan another go. But he’s my boyfriend’s very favourite writer in the whole world (except me) so he told me I had to try On Chesil Beach because I’d love it. I was quite annoyed when he turns out to be right but at least it meant I didn’t have to suffer like I did with Atonement.
One of the things I hated about Atonement was that Ian McEwan copied bits from other sources. I don’t know if he’s done the same thing in On Chesil Beach or not but in a way I don’t want to know. I really enjoyed it and it will spoil it a bit if it turned out not to be an original work of fiction.
It certainly seemed original. It’s set in the fifties. Florence and Edward are on honeymoon. It’s their wedding night and they’re both virgins so they don’t know what to expect. Edward can’t wait (typical man) but Florence is a bit freaked out by the whole idea of it. It starts off with them eating their first meal alone as a married couple, then they go into the bedroom. Then we start seeing a series of flashbacks. We hear about the first time they encountered one another and the time when they finally met (these are not the same thing). We see how their relationship progressed from there and a bit about their contrasting home lives. We discover Florence went to music college to study the violin and Edward went to university and got into brawls.
The parts of the book set in the present (the wedding night) are told in chronological order but the rest is told in quite a random way. However it is very effective. The more you read, the more you unravel, the more things start to make sense. It’s only annoying when McEwan has left you at a very exciting point and then he goes off and talks about something else instead. But a lot of good authors do that.
Edward is a bit of a strange character. He turns out to be a very different character from how he seemed at the beginning of the book. He’s very polite and slightly reserved towards Florence so I thought he was quite a gentle sort of person. Then it turns out he likes getting into fights. Edward as a character is full of surprises but McEwan doesn’t reveal Edward’s character in an unrealistic way. I had no trouble believing he really was as he was being described. I wasn’t sure I liked him but I did find him very interesting.
Florence I identified with quite a lot. At first, I thought she was naturally nervous about her wedding night because she didn’t really know much about it but it turns out she is quite repulsed by the whole idea. I find this completely reasonable. I love my boyfriend and we’re very happy and, well, use your imagination, we have been together for nearly two years. But the idea of having his urinating apparatus inside me isn’t one that gets me particularly excited. And the thought of him… exploding all over me is a bit ewwww when you think about it. It’s not that I don’t get excited, it’s just I get more excited when he’s got his clothes on (or, well, my clothes on). So I really felt for Florence and McEwan described her feelings really well.
I liked the parts about music too. Often when people write about music you can tell whether they actually know anything about it or not. Like there was one book with a character who wanted to play a particular flute piece slowly. Reasonable in theory but that particular piece you have to play really fast because you can’t take breaths in the middle of the phrases. Then you get the occasional violin with frets and or a clarinet with a double reed which really does get on my nerves. (The violin does not have frets and the clarinet has a single reed.)
But I had no trouble with Florence’s being a really good, professional standard violinist. There weren’t many descriptions of it but there was nothing that stood out as ridiculous. Maybe she spent a bit more time practising her scales and arpeggios than she needed to – you do need to practise them a lot but you get to practise pieces too - but it wasn’t so much it was actually unbelievable. The descriptions of the Wigmore Hall were also excellent. It has been refurbished at least once since the book and the only place I’ve been backstage is the Green Room but it was mostly possible to imagine the Wigmore Hall, read the descriptions, know exactly what he was talking about and have no doubt that he really was talking about the Wigmore Hall.
Some of the sentences might have been just slightly longer than they needed to be but only if I’m being really fussy. I actually really liked McEwan’s use of language. It was sort of gentle, like the waves undulating near Chesil Beach. At the very start McEwan showed a slight inclination to sneer at his characters but after that he really seemed to be inside their heads rather than laughing and pointing.
There isn’t much dialogue. Most of it is descriptions. Usually this sort of thing annoys me as I love dialogue but this book seemed right without dialogue. It’s about two people who have a lot of thoughts, feelings and memories they haven’t shared – and to an extent can’t share - with one another. When a conversation is described, it’s not necessarily the words that are spoken that are the most important thing. So I really like the book as it is.
Chesil Beach is a fascinating location for a story but to an extent it’s wasted because Chesil Beach is one of the few places in the book that isn’t described in detail and also really the only part of the book where the words used in conversation become more important than the setting. There are probably many exciting stories that could be set on Chesil Beach and nowhere else but on Chesil Beach but the book On Chesil Beach could in theory have been set anywhere. There doesn’t even need to be a beach at all as far as I can see. Anywhere outdoors would do.
So in some ways I wish McEwan had set his story somewhere else as now I think writers will feel discouraged from using Chesil Beach as a setting even if they wrote a very different story because the book is so famous. But at the same time, Chesil Beach is an exciting, magical place and just the fact that it’s really there gives the story something extra.
One of the things I hated about Atonement was that Ian McEwan copied bits from other sources. I don’t know if he’s done the same thing in On Chesil Beach or not but in a way I don’t want to know. I really enjoyed it and it will spoil it a bit if it turned out not to be an original work of fiction.
It certainly seemed original. It’s set in the fifties. Florence and Edward are on honeymoon. It’s their wedding night and they’re both virgins so they don’t know what to expect. Edward can’t wait (typical man) but Florence is a bit freaked out by the whole idea of it. It starts off with them eating their first meal alone as a married couple, then they go into the bedroom. Then we start seeing a series of flashbacks. We hear about the first time they encountered one another and the time when they finally met (these are not the same thing). We see how their relationship progressed from there and a bit about their contrasting home lives. We discover Florence went to music college to study the violin and Edward went to university and got into brawls.
The parts of the book set in the present (the wedding night) are told in chronological order but the rest is told in quite a random way. However it is very effective. The more you read, the more you unravel, the more things start to make sense. It’s only annoying when McEwan has left you at a very exciting point and then he goes off and talks about something else instead. But a lot of good authors do that.
Edward is a bit of a strange character. He turns out to be a very different character from how he seemed at the beginning of the book. He’s very polite and slightly reserved towards Florence so I thought he was quite a gentle sort of person. Then it turns out he likes getting into fights. Edward as a character is full of surprises but McEwan doesn’t reveal Edward’s character in an unrealistic way. I had no trouble believing he really was as he was being described. I wasn’t sure I liked him but I did find him very interesting.
Florence I identified with quite a lot. At first, I thought she was naturally nervous about her wedding night because she didn’t really know much about it but it turns out she is quite repulsed by the whole idea. I find this completely reasonable. I love my boyfriend and we’re very happy and, well, use your imagination, we have been together for nearly two years. But the idea of having his urinating apparatus inside me isn’t one that gets me particularly excited. And the thought of him… exploding all over me is a bit ewwww when you think about it. It’s not that I don’t get excited, it’s just I get more excited when he’s got his clothes on (or, well, my clothes on). So I really felt for Florence and McEwan described her feelings really well.
I liked the parts about music too. Often when people write about music you can tell whether they actually know anything about it or not. Like there was one book with a character who wanted to play a particular flute piece slowly. Reasonable in theory but that particular piece you have to play really fast because you can’t take breaths in the middle of the phrases. Then you get the occasional violin with frets and or a clarinet with a double reed which really does get on my nerves. (The violin does not have frets and the clarinet has a single reed.)
But I had no trouble with Florence’s being a really good, professional standard violinist. There weren’t many descriptions of it but there was nothing that stood out as ridiculous. Maybe she spent a bit more time practising her scales and arpeggios than she needed to – you do need to practise them a lot but you get to practise pieces too - but it wasn’t so much it was actually unbelievable. The descriptions of the Wigmore Hall were also excellent. It has been refurbished at least once since the book and the only place I’ve been backstage is the Green Room but it was mostly possible to imagine the Wigmore Hall, read the descriptions, know exactly what he was talking about and have no doubt that he really was talking about the Wigmore Hall.
Some of the sentences might have been just slightly longer than they needed to be but only if I’m being really fussy. I actually really liked McEwan’s use of language. It was sort of gentle, like the waves undulating near Chesil Beach. At the very start McEwan showed a slight inclination to sneer at his characters but after that he really seemed to be inside their heads rather than laughing and pointing.
There isn’t much dialogue. Most of it is descriptions. Usually this sort of thing annoys me as I love dialogue but this book seemed right without dialogue. It’s about two people who have a lot of thoughts, feelings and memories they haven’t shared – and to an extent can’t share - with one another. When a conversation is described, it’s not necessarily the words that are spoken that are the most important thing. So I really like the book as it is.
Chesil Beach is a fascinating location for a story but to an extent it’s wasted because Chesil Beach is one of the few places in the book that isn’t described in detail and also really the only part of the book where the words used in conversation become more important than the setting. There are probably many exciting stories that could be set on Chesil Beach and nowhere else but on Chesil Beach but the book On Chesil Beach could in theory have been set anywhere. There doesn’t even need to be a beach at all as far as I can see. Anywhere outdoors would do.
So in some ways I wish McEwan had set his story somewhere else as now I think writers will feel discouraged from using Chesil Beach as a setting even if they wrote a very different story because the book is so famous. But at the same time, Chesil Beach is an exciting, magical place and just the fact that it’s really there gives the story something extra.
Friday 1 October 2010
The Other Woman's Shoes (Adele Parks)*
Adele Parks is a very popular and successful writer so I was really expecting to enjoy this book. And, to be fair, I did enjoy the first page and a half. I absolutely loved the opening line. It wasn’t an especially witty or original or exciting line but it did mention the words ‘Earl’s Court station’ so naturally I was hooked.
I also quite liked the central character, Martha. True, she wasn’t enjoying being at the tube station, which immediately shows you she’s a completely different person from me but I could identify with the not liking stairs part. Also, getting stressed over going to the hairdresser's is exactly the sort of thing I’d get stressed over (if I ever went to the hairdresser’s) and I can definitely relate to not wanting to create a scene. Unfortunately with me, scenes get created all by themselves but I can understand Martha’s not wanting it.
The blurb tells you that sisters Martha and Eliza have split up from their partners and Martha wants fun and Eliza wants a husband. But I don’t think the blurb should have told you that. The blurb should really tell you about something that happens near the beginning of the book. The blurb is your taster, the thing you’re waiting for when you start to read the book. You don’t really want to be waiting half the book for it to happen.
It’s not until about halfway through that the blurb becomes even slightly true. Martha has no interest in fun for ages and even when she is she’s more interested in the provider of the fun than the enjoyment itself. As for Eliza, she never really at any point wants a husband. She does trawl through Martha’s address book in search of a suitable man but it seems to me that all she really wants is a shag.
But that’s a problem with the blurb and Parks probably isn’t responsible for that – although if there was enough excitement in the story leading up to these events, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered what the blurb said.
One of the most important things for me in a book is the characters. I want to like them. At the very least, I want to be rooting for them. But that didn’t really happen. Martha got on my nerves so much and some of the things she does made me cringe with embarrassment. Usually, I don’t even notice when someone has done something embarrassing but seriously, I just wanted to shut my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see what the crazy woman was going to do next. I’d be lying if I said I’d never done anything embarrassing, everyone does it sometimes but Martha is (I hope) so much worse than me.
Martha is also completely self-obsessed. I accept that when your husband leaves you it’s probably a bit of a shock and you might well spend months weeping and wailing but after a while I stopped feeling sympathetic and I just wanted one of the other characters to shake her. The problem isn’t so much that she’s upset, that’s natural (although I’m sure she’s milking it at least a little bit) but Martha isn’t just upset, she stops showing even the smallest amount of consideration for anyone else.
I don’t usually mind when characters have emotional breakdowns. I actually rather like it. The feeling of being drawn into someone’s crisis can (at least when it’s fiction) makes very enthralling (if not strictly enjoyable) reading. I don’t mind too much when it happens in real life either. Most of the people I know have tried to kill themselves and I don’t get annoyed about that. With Martha, it just seems like self-indulgence and attention-seeking. There is no real sense of sadness in Martha’s words or actions – my sympathy was for the poor people who have to put up with her.
Even when Martha meets Jack and starts having wild sex with him, she doesn’t change. She’s still needy and demanding. I don’t blame Eliza for being convinced that Jack’s just with her for the sex. The way she behaves with Jack is so embarrassing at times, it actually hurts (I don’t see what was wrong with the Crunchie though) but it’s the way she treats Eliza that really bothers me.
Eliza, like Martha, has just lost a long-term partner, Greg. But whilst Michael has (perhaps understandably!) walked out on Martha, Eliza has taken the decision to leave herself. So she goes to her sister Martha’s house, discovers Michael has walked out and has to spend the next few months looking after Martha and her children. Martha doesn’t even consider that Eliza might be upset too and Eliza just has to push her own feelings aside and pretend everything’s fine.
Just because Eliza wanted to leave, it doesn’t mean she’s not going to be hurting. She probably did love Greg at one stage, even if she doesn’t now so she’s still lost someone she loved. And even if she’s completely happy to have left him, her life will still have changed quite a lot. That must be a lot to cope with even if you don’t have to start babysitting your sister, not to mention your niece and nephew. Maybe Martha’s problems serve as a timely distraction for Eliza but Martha really doesn’t give her much choice in the matter. Martha comes first and it seems as though she feels Eliza’s problems don’t matter. (She does kind of realise quite near the end that maybe she’s been a bit selfish but it’s a bit late by then.)
Eliza isn’t as bad as Martha. She does seem to be a very kind and patient person. But to a great extent, she’s hardly in the book. You don’t get much sense of her personality except what other people tell you. Eliza is just Martha’s live-in babysitter with almost no life of her own. Either she’s comforting Martha or she’s trying to shag one of Martha’s friends. It’s not much of a storyline.
I do like Martha’s boyfriend Jack though. He seems like a really nice, kind guy but at the same time he isn’t a total drip. Which is a shame in a way because I do like my drips but it’s not me who has to sleep with him. I can believe a lot of women would love him as he is. He’s a bit of an unrealistic character but it’s not completely impossible there are men in the world like him. Unlike Eliza, I got the impression he actually like Martha as a person – although fuck knows why.
Then there’s the dialogue. When something bad happens in real life, I think a lot of people start talking in clichés because they’re really struggling to put their thoughts into words. But when people start talking in clichés in a book or on TV it can just end up being really funny and that spoils the atmosphere a bit. Parks’ dialogue reads like EastEnders. To begin with, I didn’t mind it so much as it was making me laugh but after a while it stopped being funny and just became annoying.
The dialogue wasn’t the biggest problem though - a lot of the time there wasn’t any dialogue. Sometimes Parks will just tell you what happened without getting into all the details of what could have been a very interesting conversation. There are also a lot of anecdotes about past events which is fine in moderation but when it happens a lot, it gets in the way of the story. She’s also one of those writers who tells you what you’re supposed to think of each character. I’d rather make up my own mind really but to be fair she does say some things I agree with. I don’t agree that Martha is a wonderful, lovely, giving, kind person but I can’t argue when Parks says she’s being embarrassing.
The book also seemed to try a bit too hard to mislead the readers. It’s fine to disguise a situation a bit, for the author to describe in a way that makes you think one thing when the truth it something different. But Parks doesn’t just hint, she tells you fairly directly what’s going on, only to contradict herself later on. Sometimes I actually found I was reading back, wondering if I was going mad or something. Instead of thinking ‘oh, of course that’s how it is’ I was thinking ‘That’s not what you said before, look’.
I won’t say too much about the ending. Not that I especially want to encourage anyone to read this book but all I’ll say is that if I’d liked the characters, the ending Parks chose would have been the ending I wanted most. But that doesn’t make it the right one. In the short-term, it’s satisfying but in the long-term, I think they’re heading for divorce.
But finally, I must say something about the title. It implies a sort of role-swap for Martha and Eliza but that is another thing that never really takes place. Martha starts going out clubbing (yes, at her age!) but this isn’t so much Martha turning into Eliza as Martha trying to be her teenage self. Eliza does end up doing some of Martha’s motherly duties but that’s only because they’re pretty much forced on her.
I’m sure there are some good things about this book but the only times I weren’t bored were when I was really annoyed.
I also quite liked the central character, Martha. True, she wasn’t enjoying being at the tube station, which immediately shows you she’s a completely different person from me but I could identify with the not liking stairs part. Also, getting stressed over going to the hairdresser's is exactly the sort of thing I’d get stressed over (if I ever went to the hairdresser’s) and I can definitely relate to not wanting to create a scene. Unfortunately with me, scenes get created all by themselves but I can understand Martha’s not wanting it.
The blurb tells you that sisters Martha and Eliza have split up from their partners and Martha wants fun and Eliza wants a husband. But I don’t think the blurb should have told you that. The blurb should really tell you about something that happens near the beginning of the book. The blurb is your taster, the thing you’re waiting for when you start to read the book. You don’t really want to be waiting half the book for it to happen.
It’s not until about halfway through that the blurb becomes even slightly true. Martha has no interest in fun for ages and even when she is she’s more interested in the provider of the fun than the enjoyment itself. As for Eliza, she never really at any point wants a husband. She does trawl through Martha’s address book in search of a suitable man but it seems to me that all she really wants is a shag.
But that’s a problem with the blurb and Parks probably isn’t responsible for that – although if there was enough excitement in the story leading up to these events, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered what the blurb said.
One of the most important things for me in a book is the characters. I want to like them. At the very least, I want to be rooting for them. But that didn’t really happen. Martha got on my nerves so much and some of the things she does made me cringe with embarrassment. Usually, I don’t even notice when someone has done something embarrassing but seriously, I just wanted to shut my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see what the crazy woman was going to do next. I’d be lying if I said I’d never done anything embarrassing, everyone does it sometimes but Martha is (I hope) so much worse than me.
Martha is also completely self-obsessed. I accept that when your husband leaves you it’s probably a bit of a shock and you might well spend months weeping and wailing but after a while I stopped feeling sympathetic and I just wanted one of the other characters to shake her. The problem isn’t so much that she’s upset, that’s natural (although I’m sure she’s milking it at least a little bit) but Martha isn’t just upset, she stops showing even the smallest amount of consideration for anyone else.
I don’t usually mind when characters have emotional breakdowns. I actually rather like it. The feeling of being drawn into someone’s crisis can (at least when it’s fiction) makes very enthralling (if not strictly enjoyable) reading. I don’t mind too much when it happens in real life either. Most of the people I know have tried to kill themselves and I don’t get annoyed about that. With Martha, it just seems like self-indulgence and attention-seeking. There is no real sense of sadness in Martha’s words or actions – my sympathy was for the poor people who have to put up with her.
Even when Martha meets Jack and starts having wild sex with him, she doesn’t change. She’s still needy and demanding. I don’t blame Eliza for being convinced that Jack’s just with her for the sex. The way she behaves with Jack is so embarrassing at times, it actually hurts (I don’t see what was wrong with the Crunchie though) but it’s the way she treats Eliza that really bothers me.
Eliza, like Martha, has just lost a long-term partner, Greg. But whilst Michael has (perhaps understandably!) walked out on Martha, Eliza has taken the decision to leave herself. So she goes to her sister Martha’s house, discovers Michael has walked out and has to spend the next few months looking after Martha and her children. Martha doesn’t even consider that Eliza might be upset too and Eliza just has to push her own feelings aside and pretend everything’s fine.
Just because Eliza wanted to leave, it doesn’t mean she’s not going to be hurting. She probably did love Greg at one stage, even if she doesn’t now so she’s still lost someone she loved. And even if she’s completely happy to have left him, her life will still have changed quite a lot. That must be a lot to cope with even if you don’t have to start babysitting your sister, not to mention your niece and nephew. Maybe Martha’s problems serve as a timely distraction for Eliza but Martha really doesn’t give her much choice in the matter. Martha comes first and it seems as though she feels Eliza’s problems don’t matter. (She does kind of realise quite near the end that maybe she’s been a bit selfish but it’s a bit late by then.)
Eliza isn’t as bad as Martha. She does seem to be a very kind and patient person. But to a great extent, she’s hardly in the book. You don’t get much sense of her personality except what other people tell you. Eliza is just Martha’s live-in babysitter with almost no life of her own. Either she’s comforting Martha or she’s trying to shag one of Martha’s friends. It’s not much of a storyline.
I do like Martha’s boyfriend Jack though. He seems like a really nice, kind guy but at the same time he isn’t a total drip. Which is a shame in a way because I do like my drips but it’s not me who has to sleep with him. I can believe a lot of women would love him as he is. He’s a bit of an unrealistic character but it’s not completely impossible there are men in the world like him. Unlike Eliza, I got the impression he actually like Martha as a person – although fuck knows why.
Then there’s the dialogue. When something bad happens in real life, I think a lot of people start talking in clichés because they’re really struggling to put their thoughts into words. But when people start talking in clichés in a book or on TV it can just end up being really funny and that spoils the atmosphere a bit. Parks’ dialogue reads like EastEnders. To begin with, I didn’t mind it so much as it was making me laugh but after a while it stopped being funny and just became annoying.
The dialogue wasn’t the biggest problem though - a lot of the time there wasn’t any dialogue. Sometimes Parks will just tell you what happened without getting into all the details of what could have been a very interesting conversation. There are also a lot of anecdotes about past events which is fine in moderation but when it happens a lot, it gets in the way of the story. She’s also one of those writers who tells you what you’re supposed to think of each character. I’d rather make up my own mind really but to be fair she does say some things I agree with. I don’t agree that Martha is a wonderful, lovely, giving, kind person but I can’t argue when Parks says she’s being embarrassing.
The book also seemed to try a bit too hard to mislead the readers. It’s fine to disguise a situation a bit, for the author to describe in a way that makes you think one thing when the truth it something different. But Parks doesn’t just hint, she tells you fairly directly what’s going on, only to contradict herself later on. Sometimes I actually found I was reading back, wondering if I was going mad or something. Instead of thinking ‘oh, of course that’s how it is’ I was thinking ‘That’s not what you said before, look’.
I won’t say too much about the ending. Not that I especially want to encourage anyone to read this book but all I’ll say is that if I’d liked the characters, the ending Parks chose would have been the ending I wanted most. But that doesn’t make it the right one. In the short-term, it’s satisfying but in the long-term, I think they’re heading for divorce.
But finally, I must say something about the title. It implies a sort of role-swap for Martha and Eliza but that is another thing that never really takes place. Martha starts going out clubbing (yes, at her age!) but this isn’t so much Martha turning into Eliza as Martha trying to be her teenage self. Eliza does end up doing some of Martha’s motherly duties but that’s only because they’re pretty much forced on her.
I’m sure there are some good things about this book but the only times I weren’t bored were when I was really annoyed.
Tuesday 24 August 2010
Girl with a One Track Mind (Abby Lee)***
Abby Lee is obsessed with sex. Completely and utterly obsessed. She can’t even look at a man without thinking about his cock. Sometimes catching a sight of her naked reflection in a mirror is enough to turn her on because she can’t help imagining what it would be like if there was a naked man with her.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with girls being obsessed with sex. Whatever makes you happy. Except she’s not happy because she’s not getting enough sex. There’s nothing wrong with it though. And good for her for being so honest about what she wants.
You could call Abby a tart with a heart – but that wouldn’t tell you very much. Besides, I don’t think she is a tart. Maybe I’m wrong but for me tartiness suggests an element of unnaturalness. More about being seen as someone who has lots of sex rather than a desire actually to have it. Abby is one of the most completely natural people I’ve ever known of and the more you read, the more you see how much more there is to her than sex.
She is also an incredibly nice person. She’s caring, a good friend, and while sex is very high on her List of Important Things to Do, she does care about personality too and she isn’t so completely desperate she’d consider shagging either her best friend’s boyfriend or one of the random tossers who notices she has breasts and feel compelled to point them out.
She can even talk about how intelligent she is without making me want to throw the book across the room. Because she is intelligent, without a doubt. Extremely intelligent. And I worked that out long before she talked about her college grades. Maybe she doesn’t always know what she wants but as soon as she realises she doesn’t know what she wants, she starts using her brain to work out how to get it. Amazing woman. And I’m not just talking about her ability to have constant multiple orgasms although that is undoubtedly amazing too. (I don’t think I’ll ever look at Holloway Road in quite the same way again.)
Lee is a fantastic writer. She’s witty and self-deprecating and she has a lovely turn of phrase. It’s quite amazing how she can describe sex and masturbation and penises and nipples (male and female) in so many different ways and (at least for a while) keep it interesting. As well as writing a thoroughly amusing diary, the book is also interspersed with Comparisons between Big and Small Cocks, and guides for How to Behave at One-Night Stands and What Not to Do if you See a Girl in a Sex Shop. All useful stuff and she makes it funny.
I was a bit surprised though to realise she’d reached her thirties without going to a sex party, experiencing S&M or even kissing a girl. Even I’ve been to a sex party and been chained to the wall as a man kissed me (and I do mean just kissing) and I’m quite innocent really. As for kissing a girl, I’d be lying if I said I’d never done that. Once in a while a girl just jumps on me and as most of them were a little bit mad (well they’d have to be really!) it wouldn’t be a good idea to stop them even if I’d wanted to.
But when you think about it, Abby devotes so much of her life to sex already. It’s hardly surprising really if she hasn’t had the time to be bend backwards over a pommel horse and be soundly whipped (I have bent back over one with my clothes on but I kept hold of the whip and no I didn’t use it on myself, I don’t think self-harming is a very good idea). Why try something new that might be crap when she could be doing her favourite thing in the whole world?
But she literally does spend almost the whole book writing about sex (whether it’s with a man, a woman, one of each, a whole group or with herself) and once you’ve read 20 pages at a time it gets a little bit boring. Get a hobby, woman. Another one, I mean.
And really, anyone who spends quite that much time with soaking wet knickers, for whatever reason, really should consider incontinence pads.
Warning: don’t read this when you’re trying to eat breakfast. If there is one oral activity I love it’s eating and nothing kills the appetite like a pair of wet knickers.
I still love Abby though. I can’t help it, she’s just so lovely. Not to mention sexy. And I bet she’s helped a lot of randy girls to feel a lot more normal.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with girls being obsessed with sex. Whatever makes you happy. Except she’s not happy because she’s not getting enough sex. There’s nothing wrong with it though. And good for her for being so honest about what she wants.
You could call Abby a tart with a heart – but that wouldn’t tell you very much. Besides, I don’t think she is a tart. Maybe I’m wrong but for me tartiness suggests an element of unnaturalness. More about being seen as someone who has lots of sex rather than a desire actually to have it. Abby is one of the most completely natural people I’ve ever known of and the more you read, the more you see how much more there is to her than sex.
She is also an incredibly nice person. She’s caring, a good friend, and while sex is very high on her List of Important Things to Do, she does care about personality too and she isn’t so completely desperate she’d consider shagging either her best friend’s boyfriend or one of the random tossers who notices she has breasts and feel compelled to point them out.
She can even talk about how intelligent she is without making me want to throw the book across the room. Because she is intelligent, without a doubt. Extremely intelligent. And I worked that out long before she talked about her college grades. Maybe she doesn’t always know what she wants but as soon as she realises she doesn’t know what she wants, she starts using her brain to work out how to get it. Amazing woman. And I’m not just talking about her ability to have constant multiple orgasms although that is undoubtedly amazing too. (I don’t think I’ll ever look at Holloway Road in quite the same way again.)
Lee is a fantastic writer. She’s witty and self-deprecating and she has a lovely turn of phrase. It’s quite amazing how she can describe sex and masturbation and penises and nipples (male and female) in so many different ways and (at least for a while) keep it interesting. As well as writing a thoroughly amusing diary, the book is also interspersed with Comparisons between Big and Small Cocks, and guides for How to Behave at One-Night Stands and What Not to Do if you See a Girl in a Sex Shop. All useful stuff and she makes it funny.
I was a bit surprised though to realise she’d reached her thirties without going to a sex party, experiencing S&M or even kissing a girl. Even I’ve been to a sex party and been chained to the wall as a man kissed me (and I do mean just kissing) and I’m quite innocent really. As for kissing a girl, I’d be lying if I said I’d never done that. Once in a while a girl just jumps on me and as most of them were a little bit mad (well they’d have to be really!) it wouldn’t be a good idea to stop them even if I’d wanted to.
But when you think about it, Abby devotes so much of her life to sex already. It’s hardly surprising really if she hasn’t had the time to be bend backwards over a pommel horse and be soundly whipped (I have bent back over one with my clothes on but I kept hold of the whip and no I didn’t use it on myself, I don’t think self-harming is a very good idea). Why try something new that might be crap when she could be doing her favourite thing in the whole world?
But she literally does spend almost the whole book writing about sex (whether it’s with a man, a woman, one of each, a whole group or with herself) and once you’ve read 20 pages at a time it gets a little bit boring. Get a hobby, woman. Another one, I mean.
And really, anyone who spends quite that much time with soaking wet knickers, for whatever reason, really should consider incontinence pads.
Warning: don’t read this when you’re trying to eat breakfast. If there is one oral activity I love it’s eating and nothing kills the appetite like a pair of wet knickers.
I still love Abby though. I can’t help it, she’s just so lovely. Not to mention sexy. And I bet she’s helped a lot of randy girls to feel a lot more normal.
Monday 14 June 2010
Jelleyman's Thrown a Wobbly (Jeff Stelling)***
I actually bought this book for my boyfriend but he was working on Christmas Day (I’m not sure whether to write LMAO or AWWW but I’ll go for AWWW because I do like him quite a lot) so I started reading it and then I wouldn’t give it back to him for ages because I enjoyed it so much. It’s not a brilliant book in that it’s probably not going to appeal to people who aren’t football fans or those who don’t have the right sense of humour to appreciate the book’s comedy. But if you’re a football fan and you like jokes that are often dirty (both of which definitely apply to me), this is probably a very good book to read.
It’s not all dirty jokes. As the title suggests, most of the jokes are based on words and language rather than schoolboy sniggering. But unfortunately, there’s so much football in the book, so many incidents of grown men behaving like (extremely funny) teenage boys, this isn’t the sort of book I’d recommend to my mum, even though she really likes linguistic jokes as a rule.
And I love the way the ‘Jelleyman’ in the title of the book just happens to be Welsh footballer Gareth Jelleyman. So it actually took me a while for me to realise the connection between ‘Jelleyman’ and ‘wobbly’ because I was so excited about a Welsh footballer having his name in the title of a book. But I got it in the end.
I do have to make one big major criticism of something Jeff Stelling says at the start. The book is based on a show called Soccer Saturday, in which he and several other panellists watch football matches and when appropriate they shout and groan and try not to swear based on what they’re watching. Whenever there’s a key moment in a game, Stelling asks the relevant panellist to give a report on it. Only, you never get to see the matches – you just get to hear reactions and analysis.
Stelling says that someone who has never seen Soccer Saturday won’t appreciate the book. And this, I’m afraid, Jeff, is a load of bollocks. I have never seen Soccer Saturday in my whole life and I found the book not only comprehensible but hilarious. What’s more, I really want to watch Soccer Saturday and the only reason I don’t watch anything on Sky Sports is because my parents don’t have it. I could get it if I paid for it but it will probably take quite a lot out of my £70 a week. So maybe I’ll stick to Match of the Day, The Football League Show and Late Kick-Off, which have most of the good bits on and don’t require you to pay anything extra.
Being ignorant of Soccer Saturday was not however completely without its disadvantages. In some ways I’d have liked it if the book had taken a more chronological format. This would have given me more of an idea about how the series has progressed over time, which panellists were around at the same time, what the football situation was at that time, things like that. But on the other hand, as Stelling devotes a chapter to each regular panellist (including the ones that aren’t regular anymore), you really get the opportunity to get to know them all a little bit. And that might not have happened to the same extent if it had been chronological and all the anecdotes about them had been dotted about all over the book. But that small quibble certainly didn’t stop me from enjoying the book very much.
I would like to give it more than three stars. In terms of enjoyment it deserves more than that but I do feel this is a hilariously fun book rather than a great piece of writing. But maybe it would seem great if it was printed in a more conventional typeface. Certain fonts just look amateur which probably lowers my opinion of the writing because it’s less easy to read. And it probably would do even if it was used for Pride and Prejudice so Jeff Stelling didn’t have much of a chance.
It’s not all dirty jokes. As the title suggests, most of the jokes are based on words and language rather than schoolboy sniggering. But unfortunately, there’s so much football in the book, so many incidents of grown men behaving like (extremely funny) teenage boys, this isn’t the sort of book I’d recommend to my mum, even though she really likes linguistic jokes as a rule.
And I love the way the ‘Jelleyman’ in the title of the book just happens to be Welsh footballer Gareth Jelleyman. So it actually took me a while for me to realise the connection between ‘Jelleyman’ and ‘wobbly’ because I was so excited about a Welsh footballer having his name in the title of a book. But I got it in the end.
I do have to make one big major criticism of something Jeff Stelling says at the start. The book is based on a show called Soccer Saturday, in which he and several other panellists watch football matches and when appropriate they shout and groan and try not to swear based on what they’re watching. Whenever there’s a key moment in a game, Stelling asks the relevant panellist to give a report on it. Only, you never get to see the matches – you just get to hear reactions and analysis.
Stelling says that someone who has never seen Soccer Saturday won’t appreciate the book. And this, I’m afraid, Jeff, is a load of bollocks. I have never seen Soccer Saturday in my whole life and I found the book not only comprehensible but hilarious. What’s more, I really want to watch Soccer Saturday and the only reason I don’t watch anything on Sky Sports is because my parents don’t have it. I could get it if I paid for it but it will probably take quite a lot out of my £70 a week. So maybe I’ll stick to Match of the Day, The Football League Show and Late Kick-Off, which have most of the good bits on and don’t require you to pay anything extra.
Being ignorant of Soccer Saturday was not however completely without its disadvantages. In some ways I’d have liked it if the book had taken a more chronological format. This would have given me more of an idea about how the series has progressed over time, which panellists were around at the same time, what the football situation was at that time, things like that. But on the other hand, as Stelling devotes a chapter to each regular panellist (including the ones that aren’t regular anymore), you really get the opportunity to get to know them all a little bit. And that might not have happened to the same extent if it had been chronological and all the anecdotes about them had been dotted about all over the book. But that small quibble certainly didn’t stop me from enjoying the book very much.
I would like to give it more than three stars. In terms of enjoyment it deserves more than that but I do feel this is a hilariously fun book rather than a great piece of writing. But maybe it would seem great if it was printed in a more conventional typeface. Certain fonts just look amateur which probably lowers my opinion of the writing because it’s less easy to read. And it probably would do even if it was used for Pride and Prejudice so Jeff Stelling didn’t have much of a chance.
Monday 17 May 2010
The Forgotten Garden (Kate Morton)*****
I loved the first Kate Morton book I read, The House at Riverton, so as soon as I saw she’d written another book, I bought it straight away. It’s another multi-generational story, covering more than a hundred years. Cassandra, her grandmother Nell, and a lady called Eliza who is an important part of Nell’s childhood all have their own stories which unfold as you go through the book.
It’s an amazingly complicated structure but Morton does it brilliantly. The chapters jump around between the times but the characters she creates are so strong, it’s very difficult to become confused. The story starts when Nell dies and she leaves Cassandra a house in her will. (There seems to be a bit of a theme about non-English people inheriting houses in England, see When She was Bad if you don’t believe me). Cassandra lives in Australia and as far as she knew Nell has also lived in Australia all her life – Nell actually brought up Cassandra after her tarty mother dumped her – so she’s quite surprised to discover Nell has a house in England. Cassandra travels to England to see the house and to try and solve the mystery of who Nell’s real parents are. At the same time, you read about Nell trying to solve the mystery herself and then you get to see the mysterious Eliza growing up and eventually coming into contact with Nell.
It took me a while to get into the story. The characters – apart from Eliza, who first appeared a short way into the book – were not immediately as likeable and interesting as the characters in The House at Riverton. This book is to a great extent more plot-driven than character-driven – which would usually not be a positive trait but it didn’t matter in The Forgotten Garden. The plot is so fast-paced and exciting, full of twists and turns, you don’t really have space in your brain to worry that the characters aren’t brilliant. As the book progresses, it becames more and more difficult to put it down. Sometimes you can guess in advance what’s going to happen but even when you’re right things are never quite as you expect them to be. And I love how Morton will mention characters in one plotline, only for them to pop up later in the past or future. It’s all so cleverly done and I can’t imagine how much time Morton must have spent putting it all together.
Eliza is an authoress so the book features three of the fairytales she wrote. Usually I hate it when you have to break off from reading the main story in order to read something written by a character. But I couldn’t get annoyed this time. The fairytales were so beautifully told and original too – and they weren’t exactly irrelevant as far as the plot was concerned.
The whole book was wonderfully written. The language Morton uses always sounds so beautiful. One of the most beautiful users of language I have ever read – maybe not right up there with Jane Austen but like Adele Geras she’s not far off. Morton is one of the few writers where I can see in my mind what she’s writing about. Even when she’s spending ages describing something without anything happening it doesn’t matter. I can’t get bored because there’s just too much to enjoy, whether it’s the images she’s creating, the sounds of the words or just the fact that anything could turn out to be a clue to help you solve the mystery.
I just hope Kate Morton writes some more books.
It’s an amazingly complicated structure but Morton does it brilliantly. The chapters jump around between the times but the characters she creates are so strong, it’s very difficult to become confused. The story starts when Nell dies and she leaves Cassandra a house in her will. (There seems to be a bit of a theme about non-English people inheriting houses in England, see When She was Bad if you don’t believe me). Cassandra lives in Australia and as far as she knew Nell has also lived in Australia all her life – Nell actually brought up Cassandra after her tarty mother dumped her – so she’s quite surprised to discover Nell has a house in England. Cassandra travels to England to see the house and to try and solve the mystery of who Nell’s real parents are. At the same time, you read about Nell trying to solve the mystery herself and then you get to see the mysterious Eliza growing up and eventually coming into contact with Nell.
It took me a while to get into the story. The characters – apart from Eliza, who first appeared a short way into the book – were not immediately as likeable and interesting as the characters in The House at Riverton. This book is to a great extent more plot-driven than character-driven – which would usually not be a positive trait but it didn’t matter in The Forgotten Garden. The plot is so fast-paced and exciting, full of twists and turns, you don’t really have space in your brain to worry that the characters aren’t brilliant. As the book progresses, it becames more and more difficult to put it down. Sometimes you can guess in advance what’s going to happen but even when you’re right things are never quite as you expect them to be. And I love how Morton will mention characters in one plotline, only for them to pop up later in the past or future. It’s all so cleverly done and I can’t imagine how much time Morton must have spent putting it all together.
Eliza is an authoress so the book features three of the fairytales she wrote. Usually I hate it when you have to break off from reading the main story in order to read something written by a character. But I couldn’t get annoyed this time. The fairytales were so beautifully told and original too – and they weren’t exactly irrelevant as far as the plot was concerned.
The whole book was wonderfully written. The language Morton uses always sounds so beautiful. One of the most beautiful users of language I have ever read – maybe not right up there with Jane Austen but like Adele Geras she’s not far off. Morton is one of the few writers where I can see in my mind what she’s writing about. Even when she’s spending ages describing something without anything happening it doesn’t matter. I can’t get bored because there’s just too much to enjoy, whether it’s the images she’s creating, the sounds of the words or just the fact that anything could turn out to be a clue to help you solve the mystery.
I just hope Kate Morton writes some more books.
Tuesday 13 April 2010
When She was Bad (Louise Bagshawe)***
There’s no doubt that Louise Bagshawe can write. She writes extremely well. Her descriptions are detailed and vivid. I often have trouble ‘seeing’ what writers are describing but it was easy to picture what Bagshawe had in mind, even though she was writing about places I knew nothing about, including some she could have invented for all I know.
Her characters are interesting, her dialogue is witty and you’re never going to get them confused. It’s mostly a serious book but it’s certainly not without humour. When Lita, her main character, goes to work for an advertising firm, Bagshawe describes advertising campaigns that are good or bad, successful and unsuccessful. And she does it convincingly. Her advertising campaigns actually sound like advertising campaigns. When Lita has an idea that is hailed as brilliant by the other characters, I’ve already decided for myself that it’s a great idea. (Okay I have no interest in buying the products but that’s probably more to do with me than the writing.) The plot at times seemed more like a series of episodes but there were plotlines that went all the way through the book and at times it really was enthralling.
So why didn’t I like the book?
The main problem was that I didn’t like the characters. Lita, a Bronx girl who becomes a famous model and then a top advertiser, is cold, hard and on some occasions just nasty. Bagshawe tries to give the impression that she needs to be nasty in order to survive and maybe there’s some truth in that but it never really feels as though Lita is putting on an act.
Also, everything comes to her too easily. Yes, she works her butt off and she is clearly (and believably) intelligent. But it’s not always easy to sympathise with successful characters. From a very early stage in the book I realised that whatever happened, Lita was going to land on her feet, probably within the next few pages. Not only that, she was going to end up somewhere even better than where she was before. So I very quickly stopped worrying about her.
There is another important main character called Becky. She doesn’t appear in about the first third of the book but from that point on maybe just under half the book is from her point of view, half is from Lita’s and there’s a little bit from various other characters. I did like Becky at first. I did feel some sympathy for her when she arrived at the English house she inherited, only to be made to feel very unwelcome by the snobby relatives living in the house at the moment. But then later Becky becomes unrealistically intelligent and competent, full of ideas about things she didn’t have a clue about before. So in the end she’s just a slightly warmer version of Lita.
Their relationships are also rather unconvincing. There’s a total twat called Rupert who dupes Lita and nearly manages to dupe Becky but it just didn’t ring true for me how someone as intelligent as Lita was so completely taken in. Then Lita meets a couple of other men, neither of whom I liked, before finding one who just happened to be right for her. Not that he ever seemed right for her but he was an improvement on the others.
The relationship between Becky and the guy she likes is great at first. I loved the way they disliked each other on sight, yet it was clear they really fancy each other. Then there are lots of arguments and misunderstandings and very occasionally a very short amount of time (maybe two seconds) when they’re actually enjoying each other’s company. But then it gets a bit unrealistic and it’s never really resolved between them.
Another thing I didn't notice myself but which seems worth mentioning is that the book is full of errors (click the title of the review and it should take you to the Amazon reviews). Lita ages five years in the time it takes Becky to age one year. There are references to a song and to linguistic phrases that weren't around at the time when the book is set. I don't know for sure whether this is true as I'd have to read the book again and I don't want to do that but I thought it was worth mentioning. And well done to the reviewers for paying enough attention to the book to spot things like this.
I have another Louise Bagshawe book on my shelf waiting to be read – and I will read it. But to be honest, the thing that interests me most is whether it has a character called Victoria in. In both of the Bagshawe books I’ve read (the other is Tuesday’s Child), there’s a total bitch called Victoria. They’re not the same person. So what’s she got against Victorias? (Although I can’t think of anyone called Victoria I actually like…)
Her characters are interesting, her dialogue is witty and you’re never going to get them confused. It’s mostly a serious book but it’s certainly not without humour. When Lita, her main character, goes to work for an advertising firm, Bagshawe describes advertising campaigns that are good or bad, successful and unsuccessful. And she does it convincingly. Her advertising campaigns actually sound like advertising campaigns. When Lita has an idea that is hailed as brilliant by the other characters, I’ve already decided for myself that it’s a great idea. (Okay I have no interest in buying the products but that’s probably more to do with me than the writing.) The plot at times seemed more like a series of episodes but there were plotlines that went all the way through the book and at times it really was enthralling.
So why didn’t I like the book?
The main problem was that I didn’t like the characters. Lita, a Bronx girl who becomes a famous model and then a top advertiser, is cold, hard and on some occasions just nasty. Bagshawe tries to give the impression that she needs to be nasty in order to survive and maybe there’s some truth in that but it never really feels as though Lita is putting on an act.
Also, everything comes to her too easily. Yes, she works her butt off and she is clearly (and believably) intelligent. But it’s not always easy to sympathise with successful characters. From a very early stage in the book I realised that whatever happened, Lita was going to land on her feet, probably within the next few pages. Not only that, she was going to end up somewhere even better than where she was before. So I very quickly stopped worrying about her.
There is another important main character called Becky. She doesn’t appear in about the first third of the book but from that point on maybe just under half the book is from her point of view, half is from Lita’s and there’s a little bit from various other characters. I did like Becky at first. I did feel some sympathy for her when she arrived at the English house she inherited, only to be made to feel very unwelcome by the snobby relatives living in the house at the moment. But then later Becky becomes unrealistically intelligent and competent, full of ideas about things she didn’t have a clue about before. So in the end she’s just a slightly warmer version of Lita.
Their relationships are also rather unconvincing. There’s a total twat called Rupert who dupes Lita and nearly manages to dupe Becky but it just didn’t ring true for me how someone as intelligent as Lita was so completely taken in. Then Lita meets a couple of other men, neither of whom I liked, before finding one who just happened to be right for her. Not that he ever seemed right for her but he was an improvement on the others.
The relationship between Becky and the guy she likes is great at first. I loved the way they disliked each other on sight, yet it was clear they really fancy each other. Then there are lots of arguments and misunderstandings and very occasionally a very short amount of time (maybe two seconds) when they’re actually enjoying each other’s company. But then it gets a bit unrealistic and it’s never really resolved between them.
Another thing I didn't notice myself but which seems worth mentioning is that the book is full of errors (click the title of the review and it should take you to the Amazon reviews). Lita ages five years in the time it takes Becky to age one year. There are references to a song and to linguistic phrases that weren't around at the time when the book is set. I don't know for sure whether this is true as I'd have to read the book again and I don't want to do that but I thought it was worth mentioning. And well done to the reviewers for paying enough attention to the book to spot things like this.
I have another Louise Bagshawe book on my shelf waiting to be read – and I will read it. But to be honest, the thing that interests me most is whether it has a character called Victoria in. In both of the Bagshawe books I’ve read (the other is Tuesday’s Child), there’s a total bitch called Victoria. They’re not the same person. So what’s she got against Victorias? (Although I can’t think of anyone called Victoria I actually like…)
Sunday 28 March 2010
A Compromising Position (Carole Matthews)***
I like Carole Matthews’ way of telling multiple-viewpoint stories. I think she’s the only author I’ve ever found who’s had one first-person narrator and various people in the third person. It works well in the Chocolate Lovers series but it’s even better in this book. Maybe it’s because Emily is such a big character, you get used very early on to the fact that she features both as “I” and “Emily”. In the Chocolate Lovers series, first-person heroine Lucy is barely mentioned in the section from other people’s points of views but Emily is central to everything that goes on in the book.
It took me a while to get to like her. She spends a lot of time early on telling us how her friend Cara really isn’t normal. She does have a point about that. Cara is very New Age and into spells, massage and dreadlocks. But considering Cara has just come to Emily’s rescue by giving her a place to live when her boyfriend posted a saucy picture of her on the Internet, Emily probably should have been nicer about her.
Besides, it’s not as though Emily is so very normal herself. On the very first page of the book, she is wailing like a banshee in public. I might have been more forgiving if she was a natural crybaby but she manages to be very brave for the rest of the book even though her life is full of disasters. So the banshee wailing seems like attention-seeking to me.
Also, while I haven’t really delved into the sex lives of most people I know because I’m really not interested, I shouldn’t imagine most women spend their bedroom time dressing up in Saucy Santa outfits, writing Ho Ho Ho on their bottoms, and allowing their boyfriends to photograph it. She wasn’t to know that he was going to put it on the Internet and that her bottom was going to turn into one of the Internet’s most-viewed pages but still, I think most people wouldn’t do it in the first place. And if I’m wrong about that, I think I’d rather not know about it really.
When Emily says she’s a normal person, it’s difficult not to laugh. When she says she’s organised and competent, I found it hysterical. And then I found out she was a teacher… now I’m not saying teachers don’t or shouldn’t have a sex life but you just can’t take this book seriously.
A Compromising Position is loads of fun and Matthews really keeps you guessing. I had no idea who was going to end up with whom. Emily and Cara are both in love with Adam, whose ex-wife Laura is married to Barry but seems more inclined to share her problems with Adam. Emily’s ex-boyfriend Declan is also keen to get back with Emily, at least when he’s not enticing Cara into someone else’s hot tub.
Then there’s Chris, who is such a total typical lad, I was just waiting for him to fall in love. The fact he insisted on carrying a picture of Emily’s bottom around with him and kissing it made me wonder if he might fall in love with her. I quite fancy him actually. At least he knows what he wants from what girl (though it probably helps that he wants the same thing from all of them) and he’s honest about it. I don’t want to sleep with him though. I just want to look after him. So I’m not sure we’d get on. Then there’s this guy called Sebastian, who has connections to almost all the main characters but they don’t know he knows all of them. If they had known, this book would have been a lot shorter.
It is very funny the way Adam and Emily fall in love with each other at first sight (not that it stops Adam from shagging Cara and worrying about Laura, or Emily from considering taking up with publicist Jonathan Gold) without realising that they kind of know each other already. Adam knows Cara has a friend called Emily whose bottom has been on international news (he has seen a photograph of her but presumably he didn’t really look at her face) and Emily knows Cara fancies a guy at her work called Adam. But then they have a chance meeting in a bar when Emily’s dyed her hair (and isn’t flashing her bottom) and they don’t really talk. They just drool and Adam tells her she has sauce on her nose and Emily is so humiliated, she runs off. They then spend half the book trying to find each other. This does go on a bit long. There’s a limit to how many times Emily and Adam can narrowly miss meeting one another. When Emily finally realises who he is and she decides to jump out of the window in order to avoid meeting him, things really have got a bit silly.
So it’s definitely not a book to take too seriously. It’s quite satisfactory the way all the coupling works out in the end but there’s nothing to tell you these are the ‘right’ characters, or that they’re going to live happily every after. And it’s not all that realistic. Emily might be nice-looking but she’s thirty-two. About ten years older than most successful glamour models. And I’m sure that if I created a website and put my bottom on it, I wouldn’t start earning lots of money from it, like Declan does when he puts Emily’s nether regions on the Net. I’m not even sure how he does manage to earn so much money from it. Is it pay-per-view? Perhaps, but once the national newspapers have got hold of it, and once Chris has forwarded it to his Facebook friends, there’s no need to look at the original.
And it’s also a bit disturbing that Adam takes on a job as a porn photographer in order to prove to Laura that he can look after their son Josh when she goes to Australia to find herself. Josh takes it all in his stride – he seems to know a lot more about glamour models than Adam does – but I’m not sure Laura would be too happy if she knew about it. So Adam’s pretty much deceiving her in order to get custody of Josh, and I don’t think that’s fair. But the rest of the book is so mad, it’s hard to get too uptight over these little problems. I couldn’t ever see Emily, Adam, Cara, Laura, Josh and Sebastian as real people (Chris I believe in apart from the bottom-kissing) so it doesn’t matter what Adam does really. I was amused enough to keep reading but I didn’t care about the characters.
It took me a while to get to like her. She spends a lot of time early on telling us how her friend Cara really isn’t normal. She does have a point about that. Cara is very New Age and into spells, massage and dreadlocks. But considering Cara has just come to Emily’s rescue by giving her a place to live when her boyfriend posted a saucy picture of her on the Internet, Emily probably should have been nicer about her.
Besides, it’s not as though Emily is so very normal herself. On the very first page of the book, she is wailing like a banshee in public. I might have been more forgiving if she was a natural crybaby but she manages to be very brave for the rest of the book even though her life is full of disasters. So the banshee wailing seems like attention-seeking to me.
Also, while I haven’t really delved into the sex lives of most people I know because I’m really not interested, I shouldn’t imagine most women spend their bedroom time dressing up in Saucy Santa outfits, writing Ho Ho Ho on their bottoms, and allowing their boyfriends to photograph it. She wasn’t to know that he was going to put it on the Internet and that her bottom was going to turn into one of the Internet’s most-viewed pages but still, I think most people wouldn’t do it in the first place. And if I’m wrong about that, I think I’d rather not know about it really.
When Emily says she’s a normal person, it’s difficult not to laugh. When she says she’s organised and competent, I found it hysterical. And then I found out she was a teacher… now I’m not saying teachers don’t or shouldn’t have a sex life but you just can’t take this book seriously.
A Compromising Position is loads of fun and Matthews really keeps you guessing. I had no idea who was going to end up with whom. Emily and Cara are both in love with Adam, whose ex-wife Laura is married to Barry but seems more inclined to share her problems with Adam. Emily’s ex-boyfriend Declan is also keen to get back with Emily, at least when he’s not enticing Cara into someone else’s hot tub.
Then there’s Chris, who is such a total typical lad, I was just waiting for him to fall in love. The fact he insisted on carrying a picture of Emily’s bottom around with him and kissing it made me wonder if he might fall in love with her. I quite fancy him actually. At least he knows what he wants from what girl (though it probably helps that he wants the same thing from all of them) and he’s honest about it. I don’t want to sleep with him though. I just want to look after him. So I’m not sure we’d get on. Then there’s this guy called Sebastian, who has connections to almost all the main characters but they don’t know he knows all of them. If they had known, this book would have been a lot shorter.
It is very funny the way Adam and Emily fall in love with each other at first sight (not that it stops Adam from shagging Cara and worrying about Laura, or Emily from considering taking up with publicist Jonathan Gold) without realising that they kind of know each other already. Adam knows Cara has a friend called Emily whose bottom has been on international news (he has seen a photograph of her but presumably he didn’t really look at her face) and Emily knows Cara fancies a guy at her work called Adam. But then they have a chance meeting in a bar when Emily’s dyed her hair (and isn’t flashing her bottom) and they don’t really talk. They just drool and Adam tells her she has sauce on her nose and Emily is so humiliated, she runs off. They then spend half the book trying to find each other. This does go on a bit long. There’s a limit to how many times Emily and Adam can narrowly miss meeting one another. When Emily finally realises who he is and she decides to jump out of the window in order to avoid meeting him, things really have got a bit silly.
So it’s definitely not a book to take too seriously. It’s quite satisfactory the way all the coupling works out in the end but there’s nothing to tell you these are the ‘right’ characters, or that they’re going to live happily every after. And it’s not all that realistic. Emily might be nice-looking but she’s thirty-two. About ten years older than most successful glamour models. And I’m sure that if I created a website and put my bottom on it, I wouldn’t start earning lots of money from it, like Declan does when he puts Emily’s nether regions on the Net. I’m not even sure how he does manage to earn so much money from it. Is it pay-per-view? Perhaps, but once the national newspapers have got hold of it, and once Chris has forwarded it to his Facebook friends, there’s no need to look at the original.
And it’s also a bit disturbing that Adam takes on a job as a porn photographer in order to prove to Laura that he can look after their son Josh when she goes to Australia to find herself. Josh takes it all in his stride – he seems to know a lot more about glamour models than Adam does – but I’m not sure Laura would be too happy if she knew about it. So Adam’s pretty much deceiving her in order to get custody of Josh, and I don’t think that’s fair. But the rest of the book is so mad, it’s hard to get too uptight over these little problems. I couldn’t ever see Emily, Adam, Cara, Laura, Josh and Sebastian as real people (Chris I believe in apart from the bottom-kissing) so it doesn’t matter what Adam does really. I was amused enough to keep reading but I didn’t care about the characters.
Sunday 7 March 2010
The Perfect Lover (Penny Jordan)**
In lots of ways, The Perfect Lover seemed more like part of a big blockbuster novel than a Mills & Boon. It was written as the fifth book in the Perfect Family series, which is about a big family that’s very rich and very close. Either the hero or the heroine of each book is part of the family – and in some cases, they both are. But of course, in a blockbuster novel, all the family members’ stories can happen at pretty much the same time. In a Mills & Boon series they have to take it in turn to fall in love.
A lot of The Perfect Lover is set in the past. In a previous book in the series, Louise was in love with her cousin Saul and wanted to spend some more time with him so she took Saul’s girlfriend Tullah into a maze (presumably a maze owned by the family) and left her there. It’s fair to say Saul didn’t exactly welcome her with open arms after that. In this book, we see how Saul’s rejection of Louise has affected her life. Her university work has gone downhill and her new tutor, Gareth Simmonds, is putting real pressure on her to direct her attention back to her work, which she doesn’t feel capable of doing.
We then have the parallel story of Louise in the present. She has graduated from university (albeit with a lower grade than expected), she has a good and very challenging job, and she’s a great deal more grown-up, with no romantic feelings for Saul whatsoever. Gareth reappears in her life when he gets a new job that is in some way connected to Louise’s job (I didn’t really take in all the details, it all sounded a bit boring) and they have no choice but to develop a working relationship.
If the story had been about Louise and Gareth rediscovering one another and falling in love, that would probably have made quite a good book. It would probably be quite a strange and interesting experience, meeting your old university tutor and discovering not only that he is human, he’s actually quite sexy as well. The fact that Gareth had once caught Louise crying drunkenly over Saul would only increase the embarrassment when they met again.
But Penny Jordan adds a twist to the story – one which for me spoils the book. Gareth and Louise don’t fall in love when they meet again – apparently they fell in love when they were tutor and student. And not only did they fall in love, they had sex.
Even if they’d admitted to each other that they liked each other, it would still have been a bit dodgy – I find it very unprofessional of Gareth to have sex with his student in any circumstances. But the fact Gareth didn’t know that she loved him makes it worse. As far as he was concerned, she was in love with Saul – and therefore on the rebound and in a bit of an emotional mess
Gareth and Louise don’t seem to love each other at all. They don’t even like each other. Gareth thinks Louise is a stupid, spoiled baby. Louise thinks Gareth is horrible and overbearing and interfering. And I agree with them – that’s exactly what I think of both of them. There’s no real sexual tension between them, or reluctant admiration, or a meeting of intellectual equals. It’s just Spoiled Brat meets Sex Mad Idiot. It doesn’t sound like a match made in heaven to me.
It’s true that Louise did, in a sense, invite Gareth to have sex with her. But it was hardly a romantic invitation. All she told him was that she just wanted to have sex – she didn’t care who it was with. Gareth than apparently “lost control” because he loved her.
Now, I have heard that men have less control than women. There is probably a point where they can’t help themselves. But there was never any need for Gareth to reach that point. He could, for example, have kept his clothes on. And his love for Louise really doesn’t seem like a good reason for taking advantage of her. Surely, if you love someone, the last thing you’d want to do is to take advantage of them when they’re vulnerable and force them into something you’ve got every reason to believe they don’t really want. Louise is unhappy and heartbroken – she’s in a situation where not many people would be able to think straight. She is a virgin at nineteen so she’s obviously waiting for someone special, and while Louise might think no-one will ever be as special as Saul, Gareth presumably knows there’s a good chance this won’t be the case.
I can quite see that Gareth might want to stop Louise from losing her virginity to the first random bloke who comes along but manhandling her onto the bed himself seems a bit off. Everyone quite rightly makes a big fuss when Louise takes Tullah into a maze and abandons her – it was a horrible thing to do. But I’d say Gareth’s behaviour is much worse. Tullah was probably frightened and upset but nothing was likely to happen to her. Louise isn’t going to get her virginity back. So why would Louise want anything to do with Gareth after that? Gareth didn’t rape her exactly but he did take advantage of her when she didn’t really know what she was doing
And wouldn’t he rather sleep with someone who actually wants him?
It would have been much more convincing if Gareth loved Louise enough to turn her down. The fact she propositioned him is still going to make her feel embarrassed enough to want to change courses. But this way, he hasn’t done anything wrong. Louise could still realise later on that she likes him. And the fact he was able to turn down sex that was offered on a plate is only likely to increase her respect for him. It must have been hard in more ways than one but Gareth could and should have said no.
Another problem with their relationship is, what does Gareth see in her? She might be pretty. She’s probably extremely intelligent. But as Gareth points out to her at every opportunity, she’s one of the most immature people in the world. (Trust me. It takes one to know one.) She might have the ability to pass a law degree, to argue her points convincingly, and to write a good essay about them. But that doesn’t mean she has the maturity to deal with adult relationships. You hear about child prodigies who go to university at ridiculously young ages and pass degrees but that doesn’t mean they’re capable of adult relationships. Louise probably should be capable of it – but because she’s had nineteen years’ experience of life rather than because she’s capable of passing a law degree. Gareth might admire her brilliant mind and she might have a nice body but emotionally she hasn’t grown up at all.
That’s not a criticism of Louise particularly. Everyone grows up at different rates (and Louise might well have had a very sheltered upbringing) and even if you’re not a bunny boiler, it probably is really hard when the guy you love marries someone else. But she is a baby, Gareth knows she’s a baby (he tells her so at every opportunity)… and yet he falls in love with her?
Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad if that’s as far as it went. He can’t help who he falls in love with. But the fact she lacks the maturity to know what she wants just makes his decision to have sex with her even more disturbing and creepy.
Then they meet up again three years later and they argue and Louise tells herself and the readers that she hates Gareth. And the only reasons I have for doubting her are that she’s in a Mills & Boon, and Saul has already been married off. But then right near the end of the book, she decides she does love Gareth after all, and she always has, and she didn’t love Saul. The girl just can’t make up her mind! Then she tells Gareth she loves him and Gareth says he felt the same way about her all along and he wouldn’t have slept with her if he hadn’t loved her. Well, that’s one point in his favour, but he still shouldn’t have done it and the fact that he did do it shows that he can’t have cared about her all that much.
I would love to believe that Louise and Gareth are perfect for each other. They do, after all, have two of my favourite names ever. But there was nothing in the book to suggest they would make a good couple. Most of their time together has been spent arguing and shagging. We never (except in the throes of passion) see them enjoying each other’s company. When Louise is a student, there is no indication that they like one another. That part of the story is told from Louise’s point of view and she thinks of nothing but Saul. Gareth said he realised he loved her when she was arguing passionately about something during a tutorial. But we’ve seen Louise argue. She sounds like a spoiled brat. A child.
So it’s a bit of a mess. For both of them. And when Louise blames Gareth for the fact she changed her degree course and didn’t get a first, I can only sympathise with her. What else was she supposed to do? Carry on having private tutorials with him? Regardless of whether she loves him or not, he’s shown himself to be unprofessional and a bit of a sex maniac.
It should have been interesting to see them getting to know one another again. It’s not every day you meet your university tutor who had sex with you once after you told him you wanted a shag and you didn’t care who with. But you hardly see them together at all. They snap at one another a few times (they don’t see one another that often) and then they both get involved in a crisis where they don’t really have much option but to be polite to one another.
True, Gareth gets to see Louise doing her job well, and later he sees her behaving in a mature manner during the crisis, which involves her cousin Jack. Louise gets to see that Gareth is capable of behaving responsibly and kindly towards a distressed teenager without getting into bed with them. But this only takes a day or two. The next day, they’re engaged.
As far as I can see, the marriage is completely without foundation. Whether they did secretly love each other or not, Louise has changed a lot. She isn’t a brat anymore (although she does a good imitation of one on the few occasions she can’t avoid talking to Gareth). She’s grown-up, responsible, and actually pretty boring. Gareth doesn’t know the new Louise well enough to know if he loves her or not. And Louise might go off him completely once she’s actually got him. Maybe she only loves the guys she can’t have. They don’t have enough time either to fall in love if they weren’t in love before, or to work out whether they still love each other.
It’s such a shame. Penny Jordan is a good writer and she has created some strong characters who would be really interesting if they weren’t the hero and heroine of a Mills & Boon and therefore expected to live happily ever after. In a big blockbuster novel it would probably make a great storyline as their relationship is so complicated and has various angles which can’t really be examined in a feel-good romance. They could take months, even years to get to know one another again. And if their marriage didn’t last a week – which I don’t think it would – it really wouldn’t matter.
A lot of The Perfect Lover is set in the past. In a previous book in the series, Louise was in love with her cousin Saul and wanted to spend some more time with him so she took Saul’s girlfriend Tullah into a maze (presumably a maze owned by the family) and left her there. It’s fair to say Saul didn’t exactly welcome her with open arms after that. In this book, we see how Saul’s rejection of Louise has affected her life. Her university work has gone downhill and her new tutor, Gareth Simmonds, is putting real pressure on her to direct her attention back to her work, which she doesn’t feel capable of doing.
We then have the parallel story of Louise in the present. She has graduated from university (albeit with a lower grade than expected), she has a good and very challenging job, and she’s a great deal more grown-up, with no romantic feelings for Saul whatsoever. Gareth reappears in her life when he gets a new job that is in some way connected to Louise’s job (I didn’t really take in all the details, it all sounded a bit boring) and they have no choice but to develop a working relationship.
If the story had been about Louise and Gareth rediscovering one another and falling in love, that would probably have made quite a good book. It would probably be quite a strange and interesting experience, meeting your old university tutor and discovering not only that he is human, he’s actually quite sexy as well. The fact that Gareth had once caught Louise crying drunkenly over Saul would only increase the embarrassment when they met again.
But Penny Jordan adds a twist to the story – one which for me spoils the book. Gareth and Louise don’t fall in love when they meet again – apparently they fell in love when they were tutor and student. And not only did they fall in love, they had sex.
Even if they’d admitted to each other that they liked each other, it would still have been a bit dodgy – I find it very unprofessional of Gareth to have sex with his student in any circumstances. But the fact Gareth didn’t know that she loved him makes it worse. As far as he was concerned, she was in love with Saul – and therefore on the rebound and in a bit of an emotional mess
Gareth and Louise don’t seem to love each other at all. They don’t even like each other. Gareth thinks Louise is a stupid, spoiled baby. Louise thinks Gareth is horrible and overbearing and interfering. And I agree with them – that’s exactly what I think of both of them. There’s no real sexual tension between them, or reluctant admiration, or a meeting of intellectual equals. It’s just Spoiled Brat meets Sex Mad Idiot. It doesn’t sound like a match made in heaven to me.
It’s true that Louise did, in a sense, invite Gareth to have sex with her. But it was hardly a romantic invitation. All she told him was that she just wanted to have sex – she didn’t care who it was with. Gareth than apparently “lost control” because he loved her.
Now, I have heard that men have less control than women. There is probably a point where they can’t help themselves. But there was never any need for Gareth to reach that point. He could, for example, have kept his clothes on. And his love for Louise really doesn’t seem like a good reason for taking advantage of her. Surely, if you love someone, the last thing you’d want to do is to take advantage of them when they’re vulnerable and force them into something you’ve got every reason to believe they don’t really want. Louise is unhappy and heartbroken – she’s in a situation where not many people would be able to think straight. She is a virgin at nineteen so she’s obviously waiting for someone special, and while Louise might think no-one will ever be as special as Saul, Gareth presumably knows there’s a good chance this won’t be the case.
I can quite see that Gareth might want to stop Louise from losing her virginity to the first random bloke who comes along but manhandling her onto the bed himself seems a bit off. Everyone quite rightly makes a big fuss when Louise takes Tullah into a maze and abandons her – it was a horrible thing to do. But I’d say Gareth’s behaviour is much worse. Tullah was probably frightened and upset but nothing was likely to happen to her. Louise isn’t going to get her virginity back. So why would Louise want anything to do with Gareth after that? Gareth didn’t rape her exactly but he did take advantage of her when she didn’t really know what she was doing
And wouldn’t he rather sleep with someone who actually wants him?
It would have been much more convincing if Gareth loved Louise enough to turn her down. The fact she propositioned him is still going to make her feel embarrassed enough to want to change courses. But this way, he hasn’t done anything wrong. Louise could still realise later on that she likes him. And the fact he was able to turn down sex that was offered on a plate is only likely to increase her respect for him. It must have been hard in more ways than one but Gareth could and should have said no.
Another problem with their relationship is, what does Gareth see in her? She might be pretty. She’s probably extremely intelligent. But as Gareth points out to her at every opportunity, she’s one of the most immature people in the world. (Trust me. It takes one to know one.) She might have the ability to pass a law degree, to argue her points convincingly, and to write a good essay about them. But that doesn’t mean she has the maturity to deal with adult relationships. You hear about child prodigies who go to university at ridiculously young ages and pass degrees but that doesn’t mean they’re capable of adult relationships. Louise probably should be capable of it – but because she’s had nineteen years’ experience of life rather than because she’s capable of passing a law degree. Gareth might admire her brilliant mind and she might have a nice body but emotionally she hasn’t grown up at all.
That’s not a criticism of Louise particularly. Everyone grows up at different rates (and Louise might well have had a very sheltered upbringing) and even if you’re not a bunny boiler, it probably is really hard when the guy you love marries someone else. But she is a baby, Gareth knows she’s a baby (he tells her so at every opportunity)… and yet he falls in love with her?
Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad if that’s as far as it went. He can’t help who he falls in love with. But the fact she lacks the maturity to know what she wants just makes his decision to have sex with her even more disturbing and creepy.
Then they meet up again three years later and they argue and Louise tells herself and the readers that she hates Gareth. And the only reasons I have for doubting her are that she’s in a Mills & Boon, and Saul has already been married off. But then right near the end of the book, she decides she does love Gareth after all, and she always has, and she didn’t love Saul. The girl just can’t make up her mind! Then she tells Gareth she loves him and Gareth says he felt the same way about her all along and he wouldn’t have slept with her if he hadn’t loved her. Well, that’s one point in his favour, but he still shouldn’t have done it and the fact that he did do it shows that he can’t have cared about her all that much.
I would love to believe that Louise and Gareth are perfect for each other. They do, after all, have two of my favourite names ever. But there was nothing in the book to suggest they would make a good couple. Most of their time together has been spent arguing and shagging. We never (except in the throes of passion) see them enjoying each other’s company. When Louise is a student, there is no indication that they like one another. That part of the story is told from Louise’s point of view and she thinks of nothing but Saul. Gareth said he realised he loved her when she was arguing passionately about something during a tutorial. But we’ve seen Louise argue. She sounds like a spoiled brat. A child.
So it’s a bit of a mess. For both of them. And when Louise blames Gareth for the fact she changed her degree course and didn’t get a first, I can only sympathise with her. What else was she supposed to do? Carry on having private tutorials with him? Regardless of whether she loves him or not, he’s shown himself to be unprofessional and a bit of a sex maniac.
It should have been interesting to see them getting to know one another again. It’s not every day you meet your university tutor who had sex with you once after you told him you wanted a shag and you didn’t care who with. But you hardly see them together at all. They snap at one another a few times (they don’t see one another that often) and then they both get involved in a crisis where they don’t really have much option but to be polite to one another.
True, Gareth gets to see Louise doing her job well, and later he sees her behaving in a mature manner during the crisis, which involves her cousin Jack. Louise gets to see that Gareth is capable of behaving responsibly and kindly towards a distressed teenager without getting into bed with them. But this only takes a day or two. The next day, they’re engaged.
As far as I can see, the marriage is completely without foundation. Whether they did secretly love each other or not, Louise has changed a lot. She isn’t a brat anymore (although she does a good imitation of one on the few occasions she can’t avoid talking to Gareth). She’s grown-up, responsible, and actually pretty boring. Gareth doesn’t know the new Louise well enough to know if he loves her or not. And Louise might go off him completely once she’s actually got him. Maybe she only loves the guys she can’t have. They don’t have enough time either to fall in love if they weren’t in love before, or to work out whether they still love each other.
It’s such a shame. Penny Jordan is a good writer and she has created some strong characters who would be really interesting if they weren’t the hero and heroine of a Mills & Boon and therefore expected to live happily ever after. In a big blockbuster novel it would probably make a great storyline as their relationship is so complicated and has various angles which can’t really be examined in a feel-good romance. They could take months, even years to get to know one another again. And if their marriage didn’t last a week – which I don’t think it would – it really wouldn’t matter.
Thursday 11 February 2010
Appointment at the Altar (Jessica Hart)***
Lucy – like author Jessica Hart, in fact – suffers from itchy feet, and the only jobs she has ever had are short-term ones. Whilst working as a cook on an Australian ranch, she meets Guy, who is the big boss of a merchant bank. He challenges her to get a ‘proper’ job – and Lucy duly does… in his merchant bank.
There are a few problems with the plot. Firstly, Lucy’s job situation does not seem like a sign of her immaturity to me. On the contrary, I would say that to travel to far-flung places, taking on a wide variety of jobs along the way and forming social relationships with all different kinds of people along the way, does demand a great deal of maturity. I’m not exactly the most mature person in the world and I’m not sure I could manage a job in a merchant bank but I’d be much better in steady employment in the same place at the same time with the same people than I would travelling all over the world and trying to make friends with new people all the time. Lucy might have certain childish characteristics, which will be discussed later, but she works hard on and does well at all her different jobs and I wouldn’t say her lack of maturity was reflected in her work.
This is not the only weakness in the plot. Hart has to manoeuvre things so Lucy and Guy are in London together. Guy needs to go back to London so Lucy can see him at work – which of course means Lucy can’t stay in Australia. So Hart sends Lucy back home to try and talk her ex-boyfriend Richard out of a coma. Lucy’s sister Meredith, who happens to be in love with Richard, takes over Lucy’s job. The first problem for me is that Lucy doesn’t love Richard, yet leaving her job and travelling halfway round the world for him rather suggests she does. And I’d have thought her boss would have understood her need to go to him even if they’re no more than good friends, so I don’t think he’d insist on Meredith staying to take her place. And it doesn’t seem quite fair on Meredith to be thousands of miles away from the guy she loves just because he’s in love with Lucy. I think these problems could all have been sorted out. Why couldn’t it have been Lucy’s best female friend in a coma? That’s a good but non-romantic reason for her to go back. Then if Hart wanted an ex-boyfriend around the place, Lucy’s friend could always have a non-comatose brother.
True, Richard does create the rather interesting situation whereby Lucy, in order to stop Richard’s parents from getting their hopes up, tells them she already has a boyfriend called Guy – even though she doesn’t like the real Guy at all. For the most part, it is a wonderfully farcical situation. But if you stop and think about it, it seems a bit wrong and disrespectful to tell such elaborate lies to Richard’s parents. They do have a lot on their minds but I’m sure they’re big enough to handle the fact that Lucy could be single and not in love with Richard.
But actually, these problems hardly interfere with the book at all, which is far more about Lucy’s attempts to convince Guy she can be grown up and responsible – whilst trying to convince herself that she really doesn’t fancy Guy. But then again, if your friend is in a coma, would a challenge from the annoying guy who works at the merchant bank really be that important?
I don’t want to be too mean about the book though because I really did love it. Hart’s writing is extremely funny, and her hero and heroine are a delightful couple. Lucy isn’t very good at thinking before she speaks and she really enjoys baiting Guy. This is immature behaviour in some ways but as I said, it doesn’t have a negative effect on her work, and the sparkiness and spontaneity that prompts it are things I hope she never grows out of. She does get into scrapes quite a lot and in some ways she is a little bit dim but at the same time she is very intelligent, determined, committed to whatever she’s doing, and able to make people adore her without trying.
‘Adorable’ people in books can sometimes be a problem because not every reader is going to see the character in the same way as the author. But I really liked Lucy a lot. Guy sees her as someone who is happy all the time, which is the sort of person that usually really annoys me, but Lucy doesn’t seem like one of those annoying relentlessly happy people to me. She’s someone who feels very deeply whatever the emotion happens to be. She feels anger, love and sadness just as strongly as she feels happiness. I do wish she’d been just a little bit sadder about her friend in a coma. But then again, why feel sad about someone who is really just a plot device? The romance is the important thing, and Lucy and Guy’s story is beautifully told.
Guy is lovely too. He can seem a bit sarcastic and superior at times, and that’s why Lucy understandably takes against him at first. But after a while you realise that although he teases Lucy, he doesn’t look down on her and he genuinely enjoys spending time with her. He is very caring, kind and supportive to everyone but it just so happens he has a great sense of humour too and enjoys Lucy’s verbal sparring and general unpredictably. He’s an example of a guy who isn’t a total pathetic wimp but who does have vulnerabilities. He doesn’t shows them in an obvious way but anyone who cares as deeply as Guy does – about his family, his friends, his colleagues and Lucy - is always going to be vulnerable. And that’s enough to make me like him. He doesn’t need to have bad things happening to him – he just needs to show he’s human, that he is capable of feeling hurt and that at least sometimes, Lucy will look after him. That’s how a relationship should work. Well, that’s how mine works.
There are a few problems with the plot. Firstly, Lucy’s job situation does not seem like a sign of her immaturity to me. On the contrary, I would say that to travel to far-flung places, taking on a wide variety of jobs along the way and forming social relationships with all different kinds of people along the way, does demand a great deal of maturity. I’m not exactly the most mature person in the world and I’m not sure I could manage a job in a merchant bank but I’d be much better in steady employment in the same place at the same time with the same people than I would travelling all over the world and trying to make friends with new people all the time. Lucy might have certain childish characteristics, which will be discussed later, but she works hard on and does well at all her different jobs and I wouldn’t say her lack of maturity was reflected in her work.
This is not the only weakness in the plot. Hart has to manoeuvre things so Lucy and Guy are in London together. Guy needs to go back to London so Lucy can see him at work – which of course means Lucy can’t stay in Australia. So Hart sends Lucy back home to try and talk her ex-boyfriend Richard out of a coma. Lucy’s sister Meredith, who happens to be in love with Richard, takes over Lucy’s job. The first problem for me is that Lucy doesn’t love Richard, yet leaving her job and travelling halfway round the world for him rather suggests she does. And I’d have thought her boss would have understood her need to go to him even if they’re no more than good friends, so I don’t think he’d insist on Meredith staying to take her place. And it doesn’t seem quite fair on Meredith to be thousands of miles away from the guy she loves just because he’s in love with Lucy. I think these problems could all have been sorted out. Why couldn’t it have been Lucy’s best female friend in a coma? That’s a good but non-romantic reason for her to go back. Then if Hart wanted an ex-boyfriend around the place, Lucy’s friend could always have a non-comatose brother.
True, Richard does create the rather interesting situation whereby Lucy, in order to stop Richard’s parents from getting their hopes up, tells them she already has a boyfriend called Guy – even though she doesn’t like the real Guy at all. For the most part, it is a wonderfully farcical situation. But if you stop and think about it, it seems a bit wrong and disrespectful to tell such elaborate lies to Richard’s parents. They do have a lot on their minds but I’m sure they’re big enough to handle the fact that Lucy could be single and not in love with Richard.
But actually, these problems hardly interfere with the book at all, which is far more about Lucy’s attempts to convince Guy she can be grown up and responsible – whilst trying to convince herself that she really doesn’t fancy Guy. But then again, if your friend is in a coma, would a challenge from the annoying guy who works at the merchant bank really be that important?
I don’t want to be too mean about the book though because I really did love it. Hart’s writing is extremely funny, and her hero and heroine are a delightful couple. Lucy isn’t very good at thinking before she speaks and she really enjoys baiting Guy. This is immature behaviour in some ways but as I said, it doesn’t have a negative effect on her work, and the sparkiness and spontaneity that prompts it are things I hope she never grows out of. She does get into scrapes quite a lot and in some ways she is a little bit dim but at the same time she is very intelligent, determined, committed to whatever she’s doing, and able to make people adore her without trying.
‘Adorable’ people in books can sometimes be a problem because not every reader is going to see the character in the same way as the author. But I really liked Lucy a lot. Guy sees her as someone who is happy all the time, which is the sort of person that usually really annoys me, but Lucy doesn’t seem like one of those annoying relentlessly happy people to me. She’s someone who feels very deeply whatever the emotion happens to be. She feels anger, love and sadness just as strongly as she feels happiness. I do wish she’d been just a little bit sadder about her friend in a coma. But then again, why feel sad about someone who is really just a plot device? The romance is the important thing, and Lucy and Guy’s story is beautifully told.
Guy is lovely too. He can seem a bit sarcastic and superior at times, and that’s why Lucy understandably takes against him at first. But after a while you realise that although he teases Lucy, he doesn’t look down on her and he genuinely enjoys spending time with her. He is very caring, kind and supportive to everyone but it just so happens he has a great sense of humour too and enjoys Lucy’s verbal sparring and general unpredictably. He’s an example of a guy who isn’t a total pathetic wimp but who does have vulnerabilities. He doesn’t shows them in an obvious way but anyone who cares as deeply as Guy does – about his family, his friends, his colleagues and Lucy - is always going to be vulnerable. And that’s enough to make me like him. He doesn’t need to have bad things happening to him – he just needs to show he’s human, that he is capable of feeling hurt and that at least sometimes, Lucy will look after him. That’s how a relationship should work. Well, that’s how mine works.
Monday 1 February 2010
The Rebel Prince (Faye Morgan)**
The last romance I reviewed was about a princess who falls in love with a non-royal man. The Rebel Prince tells the more traditional story of the non-royal girl who meets a handsome prince. I tend not to enjoy stories about princes unless they’re the wimpy pathetic type. Yes, okay, finding a man with wimpy pathetic qualities in a Mils & Boon is very rare. But the more princely they are, as a rule, the more likely they are to be totally up themselves and physically incapable of showing any weaknesses or vulnerabilities. Which I consider a bit of a turn-off.
There are certainly no weaknesses in the character of Prince Sebastian, who is soon to be crowned King. Even though he has no wish to be a King there is something very strong and capable about him. But I liked him. Why did I like him? Because he’s a really nice guy. I wouldn’t go out with him myself but he is extremely nice and thoughtful and he knows how to have a good time. He treats everyone he meets with kindness and respect. I’m not saying that this is unusual for a Prince – I wouldn’t know – but it is quite unusual for a Mills & Boon hero.
You have to admire Sebastian even more for his patience towards the heroine of the book, Emma. Emma is a bit of an oddball. I usually wouldn’t refer to someone else as an oddball except as a joke because that would be a bit hypocritical but Emma is much worse than me. I’m sure she is. (Well, I hope she is.) The blurb describes her as ‘shy’. While this could refer to her complete lack of sexual experience, she is certainly not shy in other ways. On the contrary, she is extremely outspoken, even rude, and she is not afraid to walk up to a table of distinguished, titled guests and introduce herself as the chef. I applaud the fact that she is not overwhelmed by Sebastian’s social status - but a small amount of deference and respect for someone who is, after all, another human being, shouldn’t be too much like hard work.
Emma’s first appearance is, frankly, bewildering. Yes, being knocked out with a water polo ball probably can send you a bit peculiar. But Emma was talking such rubbish, it became quite disturbing. It was like she was on drugs or something. In another type of book, she might have got away with it, but this is a Mills & Boon. For the most part, she does seem like quite a nice person though, and she certainly doesn’t deserve the cruel treatment by her fellow cooks, even if she does treat them as rudely as she treats Sebastian. Even if they didn’t like her, they could have shown some respect for their national fish.
But there is a lot to enjoy in this book. The idea of the prince falling in love with the cook is always very sweet. There are also some interesting minor characters, including Will the doctor, Sebastian’s Aunt Trudy, and Emma’s cousin Louise. They all have their own interesting sub-plot, and whilst not all are resolved completely, this book is part of a mini-series. Aunt Trudy is probably too old to have a book of her own (although who knows, I have read a Mills & Boon about a fifty-two year old grandmother) but despite my reservations about Emma, I would definitely be interested in reading more about Louise and Will (not that I think they’ll end up with each other...).
There are certainly no weaknesses in the character of Prince Sebastian, who is soon to be crowned King. Even though he has no wish to be a King there is something very strong and capable about him. But I liked him. Why did I like him? Because he’s a really nice guy. I wouldn’t go out with him myself but he is extremely nice and thoughtful and he knows how to have a good time. He treats everyone he meets with kindness and respect. I’m not saying that this is unusual for a Prince – I wouldn’t know – but it is quite unusual for a Mills & Boon hero.
You have to admire Sebastian even more for his patience towards the heroine of the book, Emma. Emma is a bit of an oddball. I usually wouldn’t refer to someone else as an oddball except as a joke because that would be a bit hypocritical but Emma is much worse than me. I’m sure she is. (Well, I hope she is.) The blurb describes her as ‘shy’. While this could refer to her complete lack of sexual experience, she is certainly not shy in other ways. On the contrary, she is extremely outspoken, even rude, and she is not afraid to walk up to a table of distinguished, titled guests and introduce herself as the chef. I applaud the fact that she is not overwhelmed by Sebastian’s social status - but a small amount of deference and respect for someone who is, after all, another human being, shouldn’t be too much like hard work.
Emma’s first appearance is, frankly, bewildering. Yes, being knocked out with a water polo ball probably can send you a bit peculiar. But Emma was talking such rubbish, it became quite disturbing. It was like she was on drugs or something. In another type of book, she might have got away with it, but this is a Mills & Boon. For the most part, she does seem like quite a nice person though, and she certainly doesn’t deserve the cruel treatment by her fellow cooks, even if she does treat them as rudely as she treats Sebastian. Even if they didn’t like her, they could have shown some respect for their national fish.
But there is a lot to enjoy in this book. The idea of the prince falling in love with the cook is always very sweet. There are also some interesting minor characters, including Will the doctor, Sebastian’s Aunt Trudy, and Emma’s cousin Louise. They all have their own interesting sub-plot, and whilst not all are resolved completely, this book is part of a mini-series. Aunt Trudy is probably too old to have a book of her own (although who knows, I have read a Mills & Boon about a fifty-two year old grandmother) but despite my reservations about Emma, I would definitely be interested in reading more about Louise and Will (not that I think they’ll end up with each other...).
Monday 18 January 2010
Plane -Jane Princess (Karen Templeton)***
This book tells the story of a princess who meets her handsome normal man. I sometimes find Silhouettes a bit dull but this one had me gripped. And most of the time it had me laughing too.
Princess Sophie is a lovely character and she’s very funny – which happens all too rarely in romantic novels. I think she’s the most childish twenty-nine year old I’ve ever heard of (which is saying something) but she is sweet and caring. The blurb says she has the ‘opportunity’ of spending two weeks as a normal person which does kind of suggest the opportunity is offered to her by someone but this isn’t really what happens. Sophie becomes a normal person by disguising herself as a blonde bimbo called Lisa and sneaking out under her bodyguard’s nose. It’s not very realistic but it’s so hilarious I really don’t care. And Sophie’s country, Carpathia, does seem a very old-fashioned sort of place. Maybe it just doesn’t occur to her bodyguard that Sophie might want to run away, or that she’d be able to disguise herself to the extent she does.
The hero, Steve Kolaski, is a lovely, kind man. He’s not my type but that doesn’t matter. More to the point, I’m not sure he’s Sophie’s type either. He’s so paternal towards her it’s quite disturbing that he fancies her. But he is lovely and it’s good to see the friendship between them developing and when they finally get together it is a lovely moment because you know how much Sophie likes him. At least they clearly like and respect each other a lot and they already know they’re capable of living together, at least as boss and babysitter.
The story of how Sophie becomes part of his family is a fascinating one. Well, in some ways it’s the traditional ‘the hero needs a babysitter and the heroine happens to be available’. But making her a princess gives the story an interesting twist. Sophie is neither a brilliant housewife nor someone who is used to looking after children. Because she’s used to having servants, there would be no need for her to learn to cook or clean and although she does read stories to the poor children in the principality, she has never been allowed to take any real responsibility for them. So although she does go through the usual clichéd cooking disasters and losing-a-child disasters, it is more understandable from someone with her background.
Sophie has always worked very hard on her princessly duties and now she works hard at cooking, cleaning and babysitting. She is ignorant, but she’s not stupid – she has no trouble learning to cook when someone actually takes the trouble of showing her round the kitchen. And it is funny watching Steve trying to figure out what’s so odd about her. He knows there must be a reason why this intelligent and hard-working woman is making such elementary mistakes but he can’t quite put his finger on it.
But the wonderful humour can sometimes be a disadvantage because you can get so caught up in that, you forget things. Like I kept forgetting Steve had five children because the twelve year old female twins are barely in the book. Courtney came into it briefly when she started her period but it was almost as though the incident had been brought in to show Steve how important ‘Lisa’ is. I don’t really mind but I do kind of feel Templeton missed some opportunities, like Courtney’s twin sister Bree could have been jealous that Courtney had started her period before she did. That would have been a very interesting psychological challenge for Sophie to deal with and not an unrealistic one – and it would also have given her the chance to show how grown-up she can be.
It also bothers me the way Steve tells Sophie she isn’t beautiful but she is attractive. I think if you love someone they must be beautiful to you. When I first saw my boyfriend I wasn’t that impressed really. Now I think he’s the most gorgeous man in the universe and if anyone says he isn’t handsome I think they’re mad. So why shouldn’t Steve think Sophie is beautiful? He doesn’t have to tell her if she doesn’t like it but telling her she’s not beautiful isn’t very nice.
There is one moment when Steve’s mother calls Sophie by her real name. All writers and editors will make mistakes sometimes and it must be confusing, having a heroine with two names. But it came at a point in the book where I really had no idea if this meant Steve’s mother knew who she was or whether it was a printing error. Steve’s sister knew who she was, so she could have told her mother – plus Sophie was in a daydream at the time and quite possibly wasn’t answering to ‘Lisa’. After a few pages I realised it was definitely a printing error.
But although there was a lot about the book that bothered me I did enjoy reading it. The princess sections were convincing without being over-glamorous and to my surprise I liked the children too. I don’t like reading about cute kids as a rule, they can be cringeworthy but the children in this book were (with the exception of the twins) well-rounded and interesting characters, each with their own problems. Just like the adults.
Princess Sophie is a lovely character and she’s very funny – which happens all too rarely in romantic novels. I think she’s the most childish twenty-nine year old I’ve ever heard of (which is saying something) but she is sweet and caring. The blurb says she has the ‘opportunity’ of spending two weeks as a normal person which does kind of suggest the opportunity is offered to her by someone but this isn’t really what happens. Sophie becomes a normal person by disguising herself as a blonde bimbo called Lisa and sneaking out under her bodyguard’s nose. It’s not very realistic but it’s so hilarious I really don’t care. And Sophie’s country, Carpathia, does seem a very old-fashioned sort of place. Maybe it just doesn’t occur to her bodyguard that Sophie might want to run away, or that she’d be able to disguise herself to the extent she does.
The hero, Steve Kolaski, is a lovely, kind man. He’s not my type but that doesn’t matter. More to the point, I’m not sure he’s Sophie’s type either. He’s so paternal towards her it’s quite disturbing that he fancies her. But he is lovely and it’s good to see the friendship between them developing and when they finally get together it is a lovely moment because you know how much Sophie likes him. At least they clearly like and respect each other a lot and they already know they’re capable of living together, at least as boss and babysitter.
The story of how Sophie becomes part of his family is a fascinating one. Well, in some ways it’s the traditional ‘the hero needs a babysitter and the heroine happens to be available’. But making her a princess gives the story an interesting twist. Sophie is neither a brilliant housewife nor someone who is used to looking after children. Because she’s used to having servants, there would be no need for her to learn to cook or clean and although she does read stories to the poor children in the principality, she has never been allowed to take any real responsibility for them. So although she does go through the usual clichéd cooking disasters and losing-a-child disasters, it is more understandable from someone with her background.
Sophie has always worked very hard on her princessly duties and now she works hard at cooking, cleaning and babysitting. She is ignorant, but she’s not stupid – she has no trouble learning to cook when someone actually takes the trouble of showing her round the kitchen. And it is funny watching Steve trying to figure out what’s so odd about her. He knows there must be a reason why this intelligent and hard-working woman is making such elementary mistakes but he can’t quite put his finger on it.
But the wonderful humour can sometimes be a disadvantage because you can get so caught up in that, you forget things. Like I kept forgetting Steve had five children because the twelve year old female twins are barely in the book. Courtney came into it briefly when she started her period but it was almost as though the incident had been brought in to show Steve how important ‘Lisa’ is. I don’t really mind but I do kind of feel Templeton missed some opportunities, like Courtney’s twin sister Bree could have been jealous that Courtney had started her period before she did. That would have been a very interesting psychological challenge for Sophie to deal with and not an unrealistic one – and it would also have given her the chance to show how grown-up she can be.
It also bothers me the way Steve tells Sophie she isn’t beautiful but she is attractive. I think if you love someone they must be beautiful to you. When I first saw my boyfriend I wasn’t that impressed really. Now I think he’s the most gorgeous man in the universe and if anyone says he isn’t handsome I think they’re mad. So why shouldn’t Steve think Sophie is beautiful? He doesn’t have to tell her if she doesn’t like it but telling her she’s not beautiful isn’t very nice.
There is one moment when Steve’s mother calls Sophie by her real name. All writers and editors will make mistakes sometimes and it must be confusing, having a heroine with two names. But it came at a point in the book where I really had no idea if this meant Steve’s mother knew who she was or whether it was a printing error. Steve’s sister knew who she was, so she could have told her mother – plus Sophie was in a daydream at the time and quite possibly wasn’t answering to ‘Lisa’. After a few pages I realised it was definitely a printing error.
But although there was a lot about the book that bothered me I did enjoy reading it. The princess sections were convincing without being over-glamorous and to my surprise I liked the children too. I don’t like reading about cute kids as a rule, they can be cringeworthy but the children in this book were (with the exception of the twins) well-rounded and interesting characters, each with their own problems. Just like the adults.
Wednesday 13 January 2010
The Boss's Unconventional Assistant (Jennie Adams)****
I have read the odd Mills & Boon and found it amusing but up until I read this book the funniest bits were the sentences that didn’t quite make sense, like ‘putting her shoes on, she ran after him’. I loved the image of the heroine kind of hopping and hanging onto the banister as she literally tried to run and put her shoes on at the same time. Yes, I do know the authors didn’t mean for me to imagine this but that is what they’re saying.
Then there are some other sentences that sound very grand and sensual on first reading but when you think about them, they’re actually a bit mad. The one my mum (who has only read about one Mills & Boon) likes to quote is: ‘Standing in front of her, he was unmistakeably male’. Well considering the guy was naked at the time I would hope it was unmistakeable! What’s the alternative? ‘Standing in front of her, it was difficult to tell whether he was male or not’????? If that’s the case, the heroine’s got a problem!
Then I read The Boss’s Unconventional Assistant and I found out that Mills & Boons could not only be intentionally funny, they could actually be rather hilarious. Soph might be my favourite Mills & Boon character ever and not just because she shares my name. It actually took me a while to get used to the fact Jennie Adams calls her Soph – that is really the only criticism I can make. My friends call me Soph all the time and they might even talk about me as Soph but I would never introduce myself by that name. Some names like Jo and Sue are short forms but I can accept them as proper names. Soph however is more of a nickname.
In fact she herself introduces herself as Sophia first and then asks people to call her Soph. She says that everyone calls her Soph but that’s not always true – when Soph goes to visit her sisters, they call her Sophia. I didn’t keep a tally, but I’m sure they called her Sophia more often than they called her Soph. And I was a bit surprised to read that she went a bit mushy inside when the hero, Grey, called her Soph for the first time. That sounds more like friendliness than romance to me – a change from Sophia to Sophie would have seemed more convincing. And yes, my boyfriend does call me Soph. But not usually when he’s being romantic. It’s always Sophie or cariad. If he says ‘I love you Soph’ it usually means I’ve done something a bit silly like getting canopy and canapé mixed up. Or boudoir and abattoir.
And while we’re on the subject of names, isn’t Grey a short form of Graham? Maybe it is his actual name and Adams has given him an unusual name to make him seem sexy but for a boss to ask his assistant to call him Grey and for him to insist on calling her Sophia seems a bit odd.
But never mind, Soph does suit her. She’s not only an unconventional assistant, she’s an unconventional Mills & Boon heroine too. Most of them are fairly quiet an unassuming and make no attempt to wear the trousers. You do get the odd one who answers back but that’s usually part of the sexual undercurrents. It’s not unknown for the heroine to be taking care of the hero when he’s injured – that happened in the last Mills & Boon I read, The Italian Playboy’s Secret Son - but the hero is always pretty much in charge even when she’s pushing him along in a wheelchair (Grey isn’t in a wheelchair but Cesar in The Italian Playboy’s Secret Son is). Most heroines have a nurturing side to their personality but they tend not to do it with aromatherapy candles and massage oils. And they definitely don’t have crimson or green hair. Crimson lips and green eyes, possibly. But not hair.
I absolutely loved Soph. She is bubbly and fun and capable of getting into awkward situations but not because she’s lacking in intelligence. The first time we see her she is wondering how to smuggle a rabbit into Grey’s house without him knowing. I’m not even sure if I’ve read about a heroine who has a pet before, certainly not one whom she rescues one on the way to her new job and decides to take with her.
She’s cheerful and determined but she comes over as sweet rather than overbearing. She can be bossy, she has no trouble making sure Grey does his physiotherapy but there’s something so charming about it and it isn’t because she wants to overpower him. It’s not even because her job is to look after Grey while he recovers from a broken arm and sprained ankle. She’s just genuinely worried about him. And not just because she fancies the pants off him. She’s practical and self-sufficient – even when she does fail to understand how to set up a visual link on the computer, she knows exactly who to phone and has it sorted by the time Grey has come back into the room. But she’s also very vulnerable, even before she starts falling in love with Grey.
Grey isn’t so vivid a character but who could be? He starts off quite growly and grumpy – he’s been told to take some time off work but he really doesn’t want to do that. Soph isn’t the type to get in an argument but she certainly doesn’t agree with his decision and she’s not afraid to let him know that. But then you gradually see him realising that there’s more to life than work. At first it’s just little signs, small reactions to Soph, and slowly you realise that he’s actually a really nice guy – probably as close to being worthy of Soph as anyone can get. And you really want it to work out for them. (Yes, I know, it’s Mills & Boon, of course it’s going to work out for them. But there’s nothing wrong with hoping.)
Jennie Adams’ writing has all the requisite (but not always present) romance but it is also full of humour. The part where Grey discovers the presence of Alfie (Soph’s rabbit) is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read – and I’ve read a lot of books. The scenes that take place in Grey’s office are also nicely done. Adams doesn’t get boringly technical about his work and if she does describe something there is a point to it – either it’s an opportunity for humour or something that shows you how Soph and Grey’s relationship is developing. It’s still Mills & Boon in that Adams follows the conventional structure but it’s full of originality.
Then there are some other sentences that sound very grand and sensual on first reading but when you think about them, they’re actually a bit mad. The one my mum (who has only read about one Mills & Boon) likes to quote is: ‘Standing in front of her, he was unmistakeably male’. Well considering the guy was naked at the time I would hope it was unmistakeable! What’s the alternative? ‘Standing in front of her, it was difficult to tell whether he was male or not’????? If that’s the case, the heroine’s got a problem!
Then I read The Boss’s Unconventional Assistant and I found out that Mills & Boons could not only be intentionally funny, they could actually be rather hilarious. Soph might be my favourite Mills & Boon character ever and not just because she shares my name. It actually took me a while to get used to the fact Jennie Adams calls her Soph – that is really the only criticism I can make. My friends call me Soph all the time and they might even talk about me as Soph but I would never introduce myself by that name. Some names like Jo and Sue are short forms but I can accept them as proper names. Soph however is more of a nickname.
In fact she herself introduces herself as Sophia first and then asks people to call her Soph. She says that everyone calls her Soph but that’s not always true – when Soph goes to visit her sisters, they call her Sophia. I didn’t keep a tally, but I’m sure they called her Sophia more often than they called her Soph. And I was a bit surprised to read that she went a bit mushy inside when the hero, Grey, called her Soph for the first time. That sounds more like friendliness than romance to me – a change from Sophia to Sophie would have seemed more convincing. And yes, my boyfriend does call me Soph. But not usually when he’s being romantic. It’s always Sophie or cariad. If he says ‘I love you Soph’ it usually means I’ve done something a bit silly like getting canopy and canapé mixed up. Or boudoir and abattoir.
And while we’re on the subject of names, isn’t Grey a short form of Graham? Maybe it is his actual name and Adams has given him an unusual name to make him seem sexy but for a boss to ask his assistant to call him Grey and for him to insist on calling her Sophia seems a bit odd.
But never mind, Soph does suit her. She’s not only an unconventional assistant, she’s an unconventional Mills & Boon heroine too. Most of them are fairly quiet an unassuming and make no attempt to wear the trousers. You do get the odd one who answers back but that’s usually part of the sexual undercurrents. It’s not unknown for the heroine to be taking care of the hero when he’s injured – that happened in the last Mills & Boon I read, The Italian Playboy’s Secret Son - but the hero is always pretty much in charge even when she’s pushing him along in a wheelchair (Grey isn’t in a wheelchair but Cesar in The Italian Playboy’s Secret Son is). Most heroines have a nurturing side to their personality but they tend not to do it with aromatherapy candles and massage oils. And they definitely don’t have crimson or green hair. Crimson lips and green eyes, possibly. But not hair.
I absolutely loved Soph. She is bubbly and fun and capable of getting into awkward situations but not because she’s lacking in intelligence. The first time we see her she is wondering how to smuggle a rabbit into Grey’s house without him knowing. I’m not even sure if I’ve read about a heroine who has a pet before, certainly not one whom she rescues one on the way to her new job and decides to take with her.
She’s cheerful and determined but she comes over as sweet rather than overbearing. She can be bossy, she has no trouble making sure Grey does his physiotherapy but there’s something so charming about it and it isn’t because she wants to overpower him. It’s not even because her job is to look after Grey while he recovers from a broken arm and sprained ankle. She’s just genuinely worried about him. And not just because she fancies the pants off him. She’s practical and self-sufficient – even when she does fail to understand how to set up a visual link on the computer, she knows exactly who to phone and has it sorted by the time Grey has come back into the room. But she’s also very vulnerable, even before she starts falling in love with Grey.
Grey isn’t so vivid a character but who could be? He starts off quite growly and grumpy – he’s been told to take some time off work but he really doesn’t want to do that. Soph isn’t the type to get in an argument but she certainly doesn’t agree with his decision and she’s not afraid to let him know that. But then you gradually see him realising that there’s more to life than work. At first it’s just little signs, small reactions to Soph, and slowly you realise that he’s actually a really nice guy – probably as close to being worthy of Soph as anyone can get. And you really want it to work out for them. (Yes, I know, it’s Mills & Boon, of course it’s going to work out for them. But there’s nothing wrong with hoping.)
Jennie Adams’ writing has all the requisite (but not always present) romance but it is also full of humour. The part where Grey discovers the presence of Alfie (Soph’s rabbit) is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read – and I’ve read a lot of books. The scenes that take place in Grey’s office are also nicely done. Adams doesn’t get boringly technical about his work and if she does describe something there is a point to it – either it’s an opportunity for humour or something that shows you how Soph and Grey’s relationship is developing. It’s still Mills & Boon in that Adams follows the conventional structure but it’s full of originality.
Monday 11 January 2010
The Italian Playboy's Secret Son (Rebecca Winters)***
I would love to write for Mills & Boon. Not that I’m saying I’m an incurable romantic but it is good to know in advance if things are going to end happily. So many books, including a lot of romance books, might end happily but they don’t always end with happily ever after. And then there are loads of books that don’t end up happily at all. I prefer books with happy endings and with Mills & Boon that’s exactly what you’re going to get.
There are however a few problems with them and the first one is evident on the front page. I don’t mean to be rude but this book has an awful title. All recent Mills & Boons have titles like this. It’s like they have a special formula or something.
The titles start with the definite article. The next word refers to the hero of the story. It could be preceded by some adjective, possibly referring to either his nationality or his financial status or it might go straight on to the noun, which tells you his status in the heroine’s life at the beginning of the book. So in the case of this book, the heroine clearly sees the hero as a playboy rather than as a future husband. The other book I bought at the same time as this one is called The Boss’s Unconventional Assistant. Can you see the pattern?
Next, just to show the strength and possessiveness of the hero, the genitive case is used. In The Boss’s Conventional Assistant, it shows the hero’s possession of the heroine, who happens to work as his assistant. In The Italian Playboy’s Secret Son, it refers to another person he possesses. If a person is referred to in the title, it can probably only be either his future spouse or a child, as anyone else is going to get in the way of the relationship. But it might instead refer to some sort of act made by the hero, perhaps a promise or a revenge. The object of the sentence will also be preceded by an adjective, such as Secret or Unconventional in the examples quoted here.
So, if you write a book about a nice rich Welsh guy who promises to take care of some girl but has no intention of falling in love with her (although this being Mills & Boon he naturally does) you might want to call it something like The Welsh Millionaire’s Deathbed Promise. I would actually like to write a book about a Welsh millionaire but it won’t have any deathbeds in so I’ll have to call it something different. But just from looking at this imaginary title you can tell a lot about what the hero of that completely imaginary book might be like. You know where he was born. You know he’s got loads of money. You know he’s lost someone close to him. You know he believes in honouring his promises.
Similarly, you know quite a lot about the contents of The Italian Playboy’s Secret Son even before you have looked at the first page. He’s Italian. He has a son he doesn’t know about. The secret son will have some connection to the heroine of his book – it could be that the child’s mother is the heroine’s sister or best friend and that the heroine is now caring for him. But more likely the hero and heroine have met before and the child was the result. You can also guess why the heroine didn’t tell the hero about his son – the hero is a playboy. So the heroine almost certainly kept the child secret because he probably had loads of girlfriends and no interest in settling down..
And that is the main thrust of the whole book. The secret son in question is indeed the product of a past liaison and heroine Sarah didn’t tell Formula One driver Cesar about him because she didn’t think he would be interested and couldn’t bear to go to him and be rejected. Some might say – as Cesar does, several times – that he had the right to know and she should have told him. Yes, she probably should have done. But Sarah is so loving and caring, both towards her son Johnny and to Cesar, it is impossible to view her as harshly as Cesar does. You know she loves Cesar. You know she’s still unhappy about losing him, even though she lost him due to her own actions. You really want Cesar to forgive her and for them both to live happily ever after.
Cesar is lovely too. Although he is cruel to Sarah, you can understand why. You can see how badly she hurt him and also how much he loves his son. The way Cesar and Johnny instantly adored one another is not entirely realistic – but this is a Mills & Boon. You can see Cesar’s point of view as well. His situation is compounded by the fact he had an accident on the race track and is paralysed from the waist down. It’s an interesting situation for a Mills & Boon hero to be in. He couldn’t throw Sarah on the bed and ravish her even if he wanted to – and you can tell he does. It’s an extra barrier between them and it serves to make Sarah’s love for him all the more believable and Cesar’s anger towards her that bit more reasonable. The poor man must be so unhappy and frustrated and not just in that way.
The beginning of the book seems rather rushed. The first meeting between Cesar and Johnny – and the first between Cesar and Sarah for many years – takes place in the hospital where Cesar is showing no interest in recovering from his injuries. There is clearly a lot of emotion on both sides and at the time I was disappointed with how fast Winters zipped through this part of the story. It is true that it takes place over a fairly short space of time but a great deal happens and I would have liked to see it in more detail. The rest of the book, which shows Sarah struggling to adapt with her son’s new relationship with Cesar, is also very interesting but there is quite a lot that happens that doesn’t need to happen and I personally would have preferred to see more of what happened in the hospital.
But I did enjoy it and I thought it was well put-together. For once, the hero’s sudden decision to marry the heroine, despite the fact he really doesn’t want to be in the same house as her, much less the same bed, is surprisingly convincing, as is Sarah’s decision not to tell him to fuck off. Cesar is overbearing at times but he also had a very warm, gentle and loving side. And all the way through the book, I felt they were made for each other. So many Mills & Boon relationships seem to be very much based on the physical side. The hero’s actions towards the heroine can seem unforgiveable it’s very difficult to believe they will last long together and it’s only too easy to question her decision to forgive him. Sarah and Cesar aren’t like that. They struggle to get on and each hurts the other but their compatibility and their feelings for each other are never in doubt.
There are however a few problems with them and the first one is evident on the front page. I don’t mean to be rude but this book has an awful title. All recent Mills & Boons have titles like this. It’s like they have a special formula or something.
The titles start with the definite article. The next word refers to the hero of the story. It could be preceded by some adjective, possibly referring to either his nationality or his financial status or it might go straight on to the noun, which tells you his status in the heroine’s life at the beginning of the book. So in the case of this book, the heroine clearly sees the hero as a playboy rather than as a future husband. The other book I bought at the same time as this one is called The Boss’s Unconventional Assistant. Can you see the pattern?
Next, just to show the strength and possessiveness of the hero, the genitive case is used. In The Boss’s Conventional Assistant, it shows the hero’s possession of the heroine, who happens to work as his assistant. In The Italian Playboy’s Secret Son, it refers to another person he possesses. If a person is referred to in the title, it can probably only be either his future spouse or a child, as anyone else is going to get in the way of the relationship. But it might instead refer to some sort of act made by the hero, perhaps a promise or a revenge. The object of the sentence will also be preceded by an adjective, such as Secret or Unconventional in the examples quoted here.
So, if you write a book about a nice rich Welsh guy who promises to take care of some girl but has no intention of falling in love with her (although this being Mills & Boon he naturally does) you might want to call it something like The Welsh Millionaire’s Deathbed Promise. I would actually like to write a book about a Welsh millionaire but it won’t have any deathbeds in so I’ll have to call it something different. But just from looking at this imaginary title you can tell a lot about what the hero of that completely imaginary book might be like. You know where he was born. You know he’s got loads of money. You know he’s lost someone close to him. You know he believes in honouring his promises.
Similarly, you know quite a lot about the contents of The Italian Playboy’s Secret Son even before you have looked at the first page. He’s Italian. He has a son he doesn’t know about. The secret son will have some connection to the heroine of his book – it could be that the child’s mother is the heroine’s sister or best friend and that the heroine is now caring for him. But more likely the hero and heroine have met before and the child was the result. You can also guess why the heroine didn’t tell the hero about his son – the hero is a playboy. So the heroine almost certainly kept the child secret because he probably had loads of girlfriends and no interest in settling down..
And that is the main thrust of the whole book. The secret son in question is indeed the product of a past liaison and heroine Sarah didn’t tell Formula One driver Cesar about him because she didn’t think he would be interested and couldn’t bear to go to him and be rejected. Some might say – as Cesar does, several times – that he had the right to know and she should have told him. Yes, she probably should have done. But Sarah is so loving and caring, both towards her son Johnny and to Cesar, it is impossible to view her as harshly as Cesar does. You know she loves Cesar. You know she’s still unhappy about losing him, even though she lost him due to her own actions. You really want Cesar to forgive her and for them both to live happily ever after.
Cesar is lovely too. Although he is cruel to Sarah, you can understand why. You can see how badly she hurt him and also how much he loves his son. The way Cesar and Johnny instantly adored one another is not entirely realistic – but this is a Mills & Boon. You can see Cesar’s point of view as well. His situation is compounded by the fact he had an accident on the race track and is paralysed from the waist down. It’s an interesting situation for a Mills & Boon hero to be in. He couldn’t throw Sarah on the bed and ravish her even if he wanted to – and you can tell he does. It’s an extra barrier between them and it serves to make Sarah’s love for him all the more believable and Cesar’s anger towards her that bit more reasonable. The poor man must be so unhappy and frustrated and not just in that way.
The beginning of the book seems rather rushed. The first meeting between Cesar and Johnny – and the first between Cesar and Sarah for many years – takes place in the hospital where Cesar is showing no interest in recovering from his injuries. There is clearly a lot of emotion on both sides and at the time I was disappointed with how fast Winters zipped through this part of the story. It is true that it takes place over a fairly short space of time but a great deal happens and I would have liked to see it in more detail. The rest of the book, which shows Sarah struggling to adapt with her son’s new relationship with Cesar, is also very interesting but there is quite a lot that happens that doesn’t need to happen and I personally would have preferred to see more of what happened in the hospital.
But I did enjoy it and I thought it was well put-together. For once, the hero’s sudden decision to marry the heroine, despite the fact he really doesn’t want to be in the same house as her, much less the same bed, is surprisingly convincing, as is Sarah’s decision not to tell him to fuck off. Cesar is overbearing at times but he also had a very warm, gentle and loving side. And all the way through the book, I felt they were made for each other. So many Mills & Boon relationships seem to be very much based on the physical side. The hero’s actions towards the heroine can seem unforgiveable it’s very difficult to believe they will last long together and it’s only too easy to question her decision to forgive him. Sarah and Cesar aren’t like that. They struggle to get on and each hurts the other but their compatibility and their feelings for each other are never in doubt.
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