Not three but four books for the price of two should have been a real bargain. But, when the best of the bunch is Katie Price’s Angel (the others being Katie Price's Crystal, PS I Love You and Everyone Worth Knowing), something has gone very wrong.
Angel is not nearly as bad as you’d expect it to be. Maybe the dire Crystal had lowered my expectations; maybe, after three disappointments in a row, I was desperate for something even vaguely good. But Angel is actually not bad at all. The central character, Angel, is a nice person. She makes mistakes, but you don’t hate her for it – it’s easy to see why the mistakes happen, and it’s clear it’s not going to be easy for Angel to get out of them, but you know she’s going to do her best. She is a little bit shallow and more than a little bit ignorant, but she’s kind and well-meaning, and actually rather sweet.
The other characters are also well-written – Angel’s friend Gemma is supportive and funny, giving great advice without being a total know-it-all; Cal, the guy Angel really loves, is very attractive, but not one of those irritatingly perfect guys you wish the protagonist would strangle. As for the decadent Mickey, he’s obviously a wanker, but he does have the sort of compelling personality that would draw in vulnerable and innocent girls, including those, who, like Angel, are finding the demands of a glamour modelling career tough. Several of the characters who were in Crystal (Angel was written earlier, but I read Crystal first) also make an appearance – Angel and Crystal share the same tough and unyielding agent, and work with the same lovely pair of hairdressers. These three characters are probably three of Price’s best – or ghost writer Rebecca Farnworth’s best, as might be a more accurate statement.
Price has clearly drawn on her own experiences in order to tell the story of the busy and challenging world of glamour modelling. Her descriptions of Angel’s modelling assignments are a lot more interesting than I’d expected, and the book explores the necessary commitment and determination needed in order to become a glamour model, as well as the possible pitfalls in becoming involved with such a career. You can understand – just – why Angel enjoys stripping off for a camera, but Price makes it clear that glamour modelling often isn’t an easy job or a glamorous one.
The one thing that does let the book down is that Price has tried to cram too much into it. Angel’s difficulties in her new job and the effect it has on her personal life would have been enough to fill a book of its length. There was no real need for her to be adopted as well – and, if Price really felt this was important, she could have devoted more space to it. Angel’s meeting with her real mother, which should have been such a big event in her life, is squashed into a few pages. Angel’s reaction to the news that her mother had been traced, and had agreed to see her was not recorded – indeed, Price didn’t mention the meeting until the day when it was set to take place, and Angel only thinks about it occasionally afterwards. It was very disappointing to be left out of what should have been a really important event in the protagonist’s life.
The dialogue is sometimes cringe-makingly awful, where Price or Farnworth appears to have badly misjudged a particular phrase. But other times it’s quite good; even funny in places. And the cover’s nice too. It’s pink.
Showing posts with label Katie Price. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Katie Price. Show all posts
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Monday, 5 May 2008
Crystal (Katie Price)*
The people who think Katie Price (better known as Jordan) must be illiterate because she is a glamour model aren’t necessarily right. Glamour models tend not to be that highly qualified because they start work young. But there is no reason why they shouldn’t be intelligent and literate. If they have a chance at a well-paid career which they think they’d enjoy, why not take it? They can always go and get a degree when their careers are over, when they’re thirty or thereabouts. It’s true that the glamour models I’ve been in touch with seem to be poor at spelling and punctuation, but very few people use punctuation nowadays, and plenty of intelligent people can’t spell.
But the fact is that, although Price’s first novel, Angel, to be reviewed very soon, is actually not bad, Crystal has very little to recommend it.
The reason for this could be that, while Angel could have been strongly influenced by Price’s own life as a model, Crystal is outside her experience. With Crystal, the tale of a girl band who enter a fictional X Factor, Price was, perhaps, being a bit too ambitious. She had ‘ghost’ Rebecca Farnworth to help her with the ‘literary’ (this term is used very, very loosely) side of things, but the subject matter is probably not something Farnworth has experienced either. As a journalist, perhaps Farnworth is more comfortable writing about fact than fiction.
The story is about Crystal, Belle and Tahlia, the three members of a girl band called Lost Angels. They enter musical talent show, Band Ambition. Like Ben Elton in Chart Throb, Price has written about ‘fictional’ judges who are clearly very much influenced by their real X Factor counterparts. Elton’s version of the TV programme is far wittier, but Price’s characters have more depth, and are slightly more believable as people. The girls are also quite well characterised: they’re very different, and, while the clearly underlying tension between Crystal and Belle is easy to see, there is still a bond, however tenuous, between the girls that makes their shared ambition believable.
Belle is a bit of a drama queen, and it’s easy to believe that someone as selfish and hardheaded as Crystal wouldn’t have much patience with this. But the problem is, I’m mostly on Belle’s side. Belle might be a little bit bitchy at times, and her ability to twist the Simon Cowell character around her little finger is annoying, but she is still tame in comparison with Crystal.
Keeping the peace is Tahlia, Price and Farnworth’s best-written and nicest character. It’s a shame that so little of her story is shown. As the least confident of the three girls, her newfound fame is difficult from the start, but she’s not another wannabe loser, screaming for attention. When a story about Tahlia was sold to the paper, I was actually glad - I was looking forward to seeing her taking centre stage in the book. But she doesn’t. Hers is a story with the potential to fill a third of a novel easily, if not a whole novel, but Price decides to stick with Crystal. Unfortunately.
And so there is nothing to do but to wait for Crystal to become a better person, and that takes time. The plot is meandering: once the contest is over: Crystal is shunted from one place to another, and the book becomes less of a continuing story than a series of uninteresting snapshots into Crystal’s life. Not even her romances are interesting. Max is a total bastard, but that doesn’t change the fact that Crystal stole him from Belle. Apparently, Belle’s somewhat negative reaction to this is a sign of her inherent bitchiness, but how would you feel if it was you? Crystal’s other bloke, Jake, is not overburdened with personality, brains, or good taste in women, but he’s still miles too good for Crystal.
Price tries her best to win some sympathy for Crystal. While most of what happens to her is probably deserved, some of it is awful. I’m glad Crystal was able to recover to some extent, but the fact that she’s suffered doesn’t make her a nice person. Crystal isn’t a bad character, but she doesn’t work as a heroine because she’s just a horrible person. Maybe, like Jane Fallon in Getting Rid of Matthew, Price was intending to create an unlikeable protagonist who nevertheless is sympathetic, but this is a very ambitious idea for so inexperienced a novelist as Price, and it just didn’t work.
But the fact is that, although Price’s first novel, Angel, to be reviewed very soon, is actually not bad, Crystal has very little to recommend it.
The reason for this could be that, while Angel could have been strongly influenced by Price’s own life as a model, Crystal is outside her experience. With Crystal, the tale of a girl band who enter a fictional X Factor, Price was, perhaps, being a bit too ambitious. She had ‘ghost’ Rebecca Farnworth to help her with the ‘literary’ (this term is used very, very loosely) side of things, but the subject matter is probably not something Farnworth has experienced either. As a journalist, perhaps Farnworth is more comfortable writing about fact than fiction.
The story is about Crystal, Belle and Tahlia, the three members of a girl band called Lost Angels. They enter musical talent show, Band Ambition. Like Ben Elton in Chart Throb, Price has written about ‘fictional’ judges who are clearly very much influenced by their real X Factor counterparts. Elton’s version of the TV programme is far wittier, but Price’s characters have more depth, and are slightly more believable as people. The girls are also quite well characterised: they’re very different, and, while the clearly underlying tension between Crystal and Belle is easy to see, there is still a bond, however tenuous, between the girls that makes their shared ambition believable.
Belle is a bit of a drama queen, and it’s easy to believe that someone as selfish and hardheaded as Crystal wouldn’t have much patience with this. But the problem is, I’m mostly on Belle’s side. Belle might be a little bit bitchy at times, and her ability to twist the Simon Cowell character around her little finger is annoying, but she is still tame in comparison with Crystal.
Keeping the peace is Tahlia, Price and Farnworth’s best-written and nicest character. It’s a shame that so little of her story is shown. As the least confident of the three girls, her newfound fame is difficult from the start, but she’s not another wannabe loser, screaming for attention. When a story about Tahlia was sold to the paper, I was actually glad - I was looking forward to seeing her taking centre stage in the book. But she doesn’t. Hers is a story with the potential to fill a third of a novel easily, if not a whole novel, but Price decides to stick with Crystal. Unfortunately.
And so there is nothing to do but to wait for Crystal to become a better person, and that takes time. The plot is meandering: once the contest is over: Crystal is shunted from one place to another, and the book becomes less of a continuing story than a series of uninteresting snapshots into Crystal’s life. Not even her romances are interesting. Max is a total bastard, but that doesn’t change the fact that Crystal stole him from Belle. Apparently, Belle’s somewhat negative reaction to this is a sign of her inherent bitchiness, but how would you feel if it was you? Crystal’s other bloke, Jake, is not overburdened with personality, brains, or good taste in women, but he’s still miles too good for Crystal.
Price tries her best to win some sympathy for Crystal. While most of what happens to her is probably deserved, some of it is awful. I’m glad Crystal was able to recover to some extent, but the fact that she’s suffered doesn’t make her a nice person. Crystal isn’t a bad character, but she doesn’t work as a heroine because she’s just a horrible person. Maybe, like Jane Fallon in Getting Rid of Matthew, Price was intending to create an unlikeable protagonist who nevertheless is sympathetic, but this is a very ambitious idea for so inexperienced a novelist as Price, and it just didn’t work.
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