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CarlyTown>The Library>Bad Book Club The Bad Book ClubFew things in life give me such a massive dose of delicious schadenfreude as reading a really terribly written book. Now, we're not talking your standard, middle of the road bad novel (like a trashy thriller or Harlequin romance), but something that is so bad, it makes you wonder how it ever got published (see much chick lit). Or includes such completely off-the-wall and discordant writing that you want to read it aloud to everyone who will listen (see Bridges of Madison County).Few things are more fun than dissecting a bad book and outlining the many ways in which said book sucks. Hence, the reviews included in this section. Also, please use these as cautionary guides and definitely stay away from the Bad Chick Lit. Put the bad chick lit down and no one gets hurt. Enjoy! Bad Chick Lit | Bad Young Adult | All Other BadBad Chick LitChick Lit is a genre with which I have a love/hate relationship. When it's good, like Bridget Jones's Diary or the books of Jenny Colgan, it's charming, hilarious and/or touching, like the best screwball or romantic comedy in book form; when it's bad, it's genuinely terrible.Unfortunately, a lot of the time, it's genuinely terrible. Since it swept the nation a few years ago, pretty much any book even resembling a chick lit was snatched up by publishing houses and many, many wretchedly awful chick lit books have been published. Here are a few of the very worst. Dating without Novocaine - Lisa Cach My sister warned me that this book sucked, but I had to check it out for myself. Yep. Sucked. BIG time. Unlikable heroine Hannah, who dresses frumpily despite being a seamstress is determined to be engaged by her birthday in three months. Which certainly doesn't sound like a recipe for disaster or anything. She has three good friends: hippie Cassie, sensible Louise and single, attractive, available Scott the dentist. Cue needle scratch and flip to the end of the book. She rides off into the sunset with Scott and I quote: "Maybe I wasn't ready for Mr. One-in-a-Million, or maybe I was. Either way, I would find out in time. And either way, I was going to be all right." There, I saved you a few hours out of your life. Oh, and by skipping this book entirely, you get to miss out on reading of the most repellent phrases I've ever heard used in a chick lit, or anywhere else for that matter. Ready? "Weenie phlegm." Ugh. Anyway, she goes on this dating spree (while flirting and having massive chemistry with single, attractive, available Scott the dentist) and dates this biologist or something and despite their lack of chemistry or attraction, she decides it's time for her to get some action. So while playing backgammon, she decides to go for it, in one of the stupidest scenes I've ever read. Here's a taste: "I crawled on all fours around the coffee table, moving slowly, staring into Wade's eyes as if I were a stalking cat." Then she kisses him, pushes him down on the floor, and "trailed kisses down towards his belly button. I sent a scouting fingertip into it, checking for debris, and was glad I had when I found the hardened clump of lint and dead skin." Have you ever read anything less erotic? She decides not to go in there with her tongue (good thinking) and moves on to his pants. She's working on his penis, but nothing is happening. After a little discussion, she learns that this is his first time "being . . . intimate . . . with a woman. It's been men up till now." And here's where it gets really ugly: "I snatched my hand out of his shorts, wanting to bolt to the sink and scrub it with bleach and hot water at the thought of where his penis had ventured." Honey? Even if he wasn't gay, his penis might have ventured unsavory places anyway. Not that you bothered to find out before leaping into his pants. Tramp. Judgmental tramp. AND, in the same scene, she refers to his penis as a weenie about four times. How old are we, people? A ridiculously stupid book. The Dewey Decimal System of Love - Josephine Carr Wholly wretched romantic "comedy" starring a celibate librarian. Carr seems to think writing comedy involves people yelling and acting in unrealistic, irrational ways. Lots of people go into hysterical laughter for no apparent reason and there's much wacky physical "humor." Main character is wholly unlikable with her borderline anorexia-food obsession and incredibly high opinion of herself. Oh, and she's an awful librarian! Hates the public, only likes her job when it allows her to flirt with married men. The rest of the characters are cardboard and relationships are sketchily drawn at best. Yuck. And such a promising title. Jemima J. - Jane Green This is a truly wretched novel. Not only is it badly written, wildly swerving between points of view and tenses, but it has one of the least sympathetic heroines ever presented to chick lit audiences. Jemima Jones (and the book CONSTANTLY refers to her by her full name) is fat and unhappy and has no friends. She also has a crush on her coworker. From pretty much nowhere, she gets the willpower to drop 80 pounds in only a few months (with wildly unhealthy behavior, of course), dyes her hair blond and unrealistically turns into an utter goddess. Takes a leave of absence to live with her L.A.-living, gym-owning Internet boyfriend. The plot gets even more tedious and unrealistic from there. The point of the entire book is that fat people are hideous and unlovable and only the thin and attractive are deserving of love. This may sound like an overstatement, but it's not. I wish it was. My Life Uncovered - Lynn Isenberg Where to start? Whew, this is some bad chick lit. Okay, plot: Chick is a screen writer, well, she wrote one screenplay and no one will produce it, so she starts writing adult films and her career takes off. And some other stuff happens, but not much. I read half and skipped to the end. Trust me, nothing happens. What makes this book so bad? First of all, I've seldom read such clunky dialogue before. Filled with clumsy exposition and long speeches, this is so remotely not how people talk. Oh, in case you were wondering what her original, legit screenplay was about? "My college summers were spent as a podiatric assistant in my dad's, Walt's, officer where I had come to adore Lily. During her ritual footbaths, I came to understand the sacrifices she made in her life, the dreams lost in self-recrimination and the vast love gained in the sweet solitude of surrender. I was deeply touched by her story, steeped in loss and self-renewal." And the old chick tells writer chick to tell her story. What story? Plot much? This book is abysmally written. In addition to the clunky dialogue and awkward exposition, she loves her some adverbs and has a knack for turning such a bewildering phrase that I wondered if perhaps English was not her first, or even second, language. She has literally no character development and after reading half the book, I could barely tell the characters apart. Clearly this is why there's a character list in the front of the book. The author also seems to have an odd sense of how things work in the real world. I don't care how great a writer this chick is, if the adult film producer generally pays $500 for a script and he pays her $3500, there's something really wack there. Especially since she's had nothing produced. Plus, allegedly the character had worked at an agency for three years and she's never heard the term "units" (used in a video context)? Weird. But what's REALLY weird is the content of this book. Chick lit is about chicks, for chicks, written by chicks, right? After reading (half) this book, I think Lynn Isenberg is a man, baby, and an old one at that, who lacks any insight into the female mind. Example A: She refers to the naked women in the posters lining the adult film producer's office as "stacked." I've never heard a woman use that phrase (nor a man, for that matter, after 1964). Example B: Dressing to go to a party, "I sift through my wardrobe trying to compose a hot outfit I can put together in a hurry—I know, the black Tara Jarmon pantsuit with a sheer top, a charcoal leather duster and black leather calf-high boots that Bennett gave me last year." If that's not convincing enough, a few weeks later she dresses for a party in her go-anywhere black cocktail dress and black loafers. Loafers! And it's not like being fashion-challenged is part of her personality. Everyone thinks she's wonderful and beautiful, so clearly that's just some wrong writing. Example C: She writes a film for the adult film industry that centers on two girls who are dating until one decides she wants to be heterosexual and the other hires a guy to date her and dump her so she'll come back to her. Not only was this already a movie (Three of Hearts, I think, and there might be a Baldwin in it), but the vast majority of the movie centers on girl on girl action. Not only that, but when our heroine goes to Victoria's Secret to watch her sister try on lingerie for her wedding (??), the adult film star (female) and her girlfriend get busy in the next stall, while our heroine listens in. Then, she meets a film producer (female) who invites her to dinner and hits on her in a big way. "And then my mind races with competing thoughts, emotions and questions that go something like this: 'Oh my God, a woman is kissing me.' 'Hmmm, I can't believe how nice it feels.' "What am I doing? I'm not gay!' 'This is wrong for me.' 'God, I miss the arms of a man, a man who loves me.' 'What is the meaning of this?'" It goes on for quite a while in that fashion and women keep coming on to her. Then she goes on blind dates with men and acts sex-crazed and licentious and actually scares them away. She's on a first date with a guy at Cirque du Soleil and can't understand why he drops her off right after the show. After all, "during the entire performance I whispered to him how I couldn't wait to duplicate all those contortions for him in bed." On a first date! Who behaves like this? (A man's fantasy, that's who.) Her second date is with some guy who she goes to see sculptures with "where I couldn't help but see, and express, something sexual in every object we looked at." He runs away, though clearly, this is another's man's (the author!) fantasy. But anyway, this is supposed to be chick lit and the guy she ends up with isn't even introduced until more than halfway through the book. The author spends no time on him, seemingly only including him at the end because someone reminded the author that this is supposed to be chick lit. Whew! This book sucked. It's amazing that stuff like this gets published. Red Dress Ink should really stick to importing Brit chick lit. ~ New ~ The Thing about Jane Spring - Sharon Krum Oh man. Okay, so there's this third-person omniscient narrator and it's done really badly so that the author is describing a scene and we're hearing the thoughts of the two people involved in the scene and wham! Out of nowhere, there's another person's thoughts coming in, someone we didn't even notice was in the room. This book was so bad that not even Library Journal recommended it. Dang. So the book starts off and the author thinks we should be SO intrigued by her character Jane Spring. She spends a lot of time telling us how interested everyone always is in Jane Spring, and how much time people spend thinking about her. If there's anything I hate it's being told that a character is fascinating to all around her, when the character is not actually portrayed in any interesting way. I believe LJ referred to cardboard characters, and they were being kind. So Jane Spring is a crazy character. She wears thick black glasses, and frumpy suits and shoes (and still everyone thinks she's beautiful), and she behaves like a drill sergeant because she was raised in the military and is unkind to everyone in the world (and still people like and are intrigued by her—WTF?). She decides that she wants to get married stat, so she tries a new tack which is to act like Doris Day. Dress like Doris Day (thanks to her grandmother's vintage wardrobe, including stuffing her bra) and act like Doris Day. Apparently acting like Doris involves talking with a voice the author refers to as helium affected, and acting like the sweetest thing in the world. Which I think is kind of a misconception, cause Doris was pretty strong-willed and could be pretty sassy. Then there's men who blah blah whatever, it's all too boring and unrealistic to discuss. So she ends up with a hot cop and plans to make her life a combo of her and Doris, even though nobody liked the original Jane Spring. AND, there's epigraphs to each chapter with quotes from That Touch of Mink, Pillow Talk, and Lover Come Back, but there's completely nonsensical and hardly connected to the chapter at all. Plus, she doesn't identify the quotes by character, but by Doris or Rock or Cary, which since Rock plays a couple of characters in Pillow Talk, makes the quotes even more nonsensical. Sucked. Sucked super hard. Slightly Single - Wendy Markham Wendy Markham is a terrible writer. She gives each of her characters one defining characteristic that is supposed to serve as a shorthand so she doesn't actually have to go to the trouble of writing actual characters. The heroine of this book, Tracey, is fat. That's it. No physical description other than that, no personality traits whatsoever—she's just fat. The rest of the characters in this book can also be summed up in one word. Unfortunately, for most of the characters, that word is based on their ethnicity or sexual orientation. Her best friend Raphael? Gay. Her coworker Latisha? Black. Her best friend Kate? Rich. Her boyfriend Will? Actor. Her new love interest Buckley? Nice. Her entire family? Upstate New York/Italian-Americans. You know you're in the territory of some bad chick lit when you have the most sympathy not for the heroine and her various romantic travails, but for the character's friends, who actually have to hang out and listen to her. Tracey Spadolini is one of the least likeable characters ever to grace the pages of chick lit. She's fat and unhappy and has a job she hates and has no interests other than brooding about the fact that her boyfriend is leaving her to act in summer stock for the summer. She has nothing good to say about anyone, nor should any of her friends or family expect her to be interested in their lives in any way, except as it pertains to Tracey herself. Not only is she incredibly annoyingly obsessed with her weight (Bridget Jones would tell her to get the hell over it), she's completely clueless about her failing relationship with her attractive actor boyfriend, she's horribly condescending to her entire family, and to top it all off, she's a big old bigot. And not only is Tracey a bigot (and not in one of those imperfect anti-heroine kind of ways), but the author is clearly a big old bigot herself. Tracey has a gay best friend named Raphael (whose defining personality characteristics include wearing tight cutoffs to brunch and having one-night-stands with sailors) and yet she constantly uses the term "faggy" (and this book was written in 2002!). Every single gay man she comes in contact with is "flamboyant and effeminate" (her words, not mine). Here's Tracey meeting one of Will's housemates at summer stock: "Oh, shut up, Will," says Theodore with such a flouncing flourish that I'm immediately aware that he isn't competing with Will for the fair Esme's attentions . . . as if his name, gold earring and Barbara Streisand concert T-shirt weren't evidence enough." And then he offers her a "limp-wristed handshake." Nice. When she meets a guy at Raphael's birthday party who seems "low-key and well—normal", she assumes that he's gay, even though he gives her no indication of such, for "would a straight, reasonably adorable guy be at a party like this? In New York? No way." What city, no—what century does this author live in where gay and straight people do not freely commingle? The weird thing is that both Tracey's boyfriend Will and her new love interest Buckley (!) seem way more gay than any of her stereotypical acquaintances. Will is a good-looking actor, who works out constantly, lives platonically with a gorgeous model or something and is dating schlumpy Tracey. Buckley, who uses casually uses words like "minx", "hottie", and "saucy" is prone to the following type of behavior: "He launches into a hilarious description of fellow beach-goers, doing accents and dialogue. He's got me laughing so hard, I'm straining my newly developing abs." When she responds with "I haven't laughed this hard since the first Austin Powers", you know Hepburn and Tracy better watch out. And just when you think maybe her prejudice and ignorance is limited to gay people, along come Tracey's coworkers, including Latisha, who has poor grammar, begins and ends every sentence with "girl" and "wags a finger at [Tracey] in her sassy, don't-give-me-any-crap way." Oh, and five seconds later Tracey remarks that "my troubles pale next to Latisha's. She's a single mother trying to raise an adolescent daughter in a rundown neighborhood where her teenaged sister was shot in a drug-related drive-by shooting a few years ago." And if you need Wendy Markham, she'll be congratulating herself on the fact that she didn't say flat out that Latisha was black. Long story short, this is a poorly written book with a worrying tendency towards bigotry. Not only that, it features a headache-inducingly dreary (and underwritten) main character. Not what I would consider a pleasant read. To say the least. Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field - Melissa Nathan Hideous. Awful. How did this wish-fulfillment crap get published? Has every journalist in England published a novel? This is a particularly ploddingly awful rip-off of Bridget Jones's Diary. Involves a journalist-acted (!) production of Pride and Prejudice in which all the characters play their P & P equivalents. Spectacularly unimaginative. Dear Jane would be rolling in her grave if she saw this tripe. Catching Alice - Clare Naylor Where do I start? First of all, the omniscient point of view (two characters' different thoughts in one paragraph, yuck) is annoying and difficult to decipher. Secondly, the character of Alice herself is uninteresting and inconsistent--in one chapter she’s witless, dumpy, and unattractive and in the next, she’s fascinating and attractive to all the men in the room, and then dumpy again. Really badly written. But I waded through out of boredom until halfway through the book, Alice decides to dump a guy by making herself physically sick and vomiting on him in a posh restaurant. Excuse me? I’d also like to point out that on her first and only other date with this guy, he tied her up and tried to get her to have an orgy with him and two prostitutes. What was her response? She fell asleep instead of doing what any normal person handcuffed against their will would do--tell him to unlock the handcuffs and get the hell out of Dodge. Then she proceeds to spend the rest of the time, saying, "Gee, I really don’t like that Charlie,” and doesn’t even have the balls to tell him to sod off. I refuse to waste any more precious reading time with this idiot. However, I will waste a little more time talking about how bad it is. Examples: “’All right?’, he charmed.” Whatever. Try “asked” or “said.” Charmed, bah. “Alice had bitten her pencil down to a stump, leaving only flecks of yellow paint around her mouth and bits of wood between her teeth.” The impression I’m left with is that: 1) Alice has effectively eaten her pencil. 2) This is the Alice who film stars and directors find fascinating? 3) Alice is a moron. The Matzo Ball Heiress - Laurie Gwen Shapiro Heather Greenblotz is the heiress to a matzo company fortune who lives in a Manhattan penthouse and dabbles in documentary filmmaking. She meets an attractive and observant Jewish boy while planning a family seder to be filmed for the Food Channel. Wacky family shenanigans, blah blah. Long story short, she falls for the adorable observant boy but her incredibly tiny and contrived obstacle to going out with him is that he's kosher and she doesn't want to keep kosher. Also, we're supposed to believe that because she isn't observant that she's completely ignorant about Jewish life: she doesn't know what a tallis is, she has never heard of the custom of Orthodox women shaving their heads and wearing wigs after they marry, and she doesn’t know why Observant Boy has two sinks in his kosher kitchen. I found this ignorance unbelievable and irritating. Also, everyone keeps telling our heroine how gorgeous she is—repeatedly—which, based on the author's photo on the back (and I don't mean to be unkind), seems like a whole lotta wish fulfillment. There are three things I expect from chick lit: I expect it to be romantic, funny and a little sexy. This book is none of the above. She negotiates dating with Observant Boy and seals the scene where they decide to give dating a shot with "an enthusiastic nod." Whatever happened to kissing? Though there are some vaguely interesting characters in this book, there's a whole lot of not funny. Heather herself is profoundly unfunny. Note to author: putting "quips" or "parry" in the text or referring to a conversation as "repartee" does not make the dialogue funny. I'm just saying. And as for sexy, whew! The one sex scene in this book is the complete polar opposite of sexy. Example: "He slips his hand into my gray cotton Calvins and with one-handed dexterity slides two callused fingers between my legs. He works his long fingers so fast it feels like a hummingbird is inside me." Other than being unromantic, unfunny and unsexy, it was serviceably enough written. Bad Young AdultThe Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen ChboskyI LOATHED this book. This book was recently recommended by scores of librarians and others who work with teens on a listserv that I belong to as one of the great works of YA literature, so of course I had to read it. OH MY GOD does this book suck. It's about a shy and sensitive fifteen-year-old who starts his freshman year of high school right after some friend of his commits suicide and wanders around high school until he becomes friend with some cool seniors. He develops a crush on one of the girls and learns that one of his new friends is gay. He does drugs, blah blah and eventually discovers an important secret about himself. The book is written as letters by this young man to some unnamed friend. I kept reading this book and going, I'm sorry, I know he's sensitive, but is he supposed to be mentally challenged? Because he acts like no fifteen-year-old I've ever heard of. He has his first wet dream and tells his crush that he had a dream about the two of them naked and bursts into tears. He bursts into tears A LOT. And no one seems to blink an eye. His behavior is completely inconsistent--most of the time he wanders around in a simple-minded fog, then he comes up with deep observations about life. I just couldn't get past the fact that no one seemed to notice that this kid was a simple-minded moron. As an eloquent reviewer on Amazon put it: "Was this kid raised in a pickle jar?" I know he's supposed to be emotionally troubled and sensitive, but there's a pretty broad line between sensitive and mentally deficient. I felt like showering after reading only the first third of this. Couldn't read anymore. ~ New ~ Teen Virtue - Vicki Courtney Wretched, conservative Christian book, housed in a teen-friendly Cosmo Girl looking cover and chock full of giggly, chatty advice about teen sex and abstinence. A sample of the preaching, from the article titled "Is Gay OK?" and I quote: "Maybe it's just me, but I'm sick and tired of gay agenda in Hollywood. I'm tired of seeing a gay guy prancing around on just about every prime-time show. I'm tired of watching Madonna and Britney lip lock on TV. And I'm tired of having the "gay is OK" message shoved in my face by the liberal forces in this country. Whew, I feel so much better now that I've said that. When I was your age, a show like Will and Grace would be the talk of the town. And if someone like Will had come to my conservative Texas hometown and displayed his flamboyant out-of-the-closet gay pride—well, let's not even go there. Trust me, it wouldn't be pretty. (p.53)" Hmm, could these "Christians" be endorsed gay bashing? Other articles include: "Are you dressed to lure or to be pure" , "are you inline when you're online," and, hilariously, "what to do when you've blown it". Vile. ~ New ~ Bass Ackwards and Belly Up - Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain A bit of a successor to the Traveling Pants books, this novel is about four high school friends heading off on their different paths and following their different dreams. Gave it a chance, like you do, but the relentless product placement consistently took me out of the story. In young adult fiction (as in chick lit) a little bit of product placement goes with the territory (you know, Stila lip gloss, Manolos, etc.). But the product placement in this book was genuinely strange and truly gratuitous. I only got up to about page 32, but here's a sample of the product names dropped so far: Equal (I'll give her that one); J. Crew black oxford shirt; Carr's water crackers; iPod, Fiji water, Gap shorts, Max Azria tank (all in one paragraph); Ann Taylor; Vaio laptop; Stila; Kendall Jackson; Aerobed, and Kettle Chips. And then we hit one of the girls' packing lists which includes Kiehl's, Chapstick, Tinactin, Neosporin, band-aids, Tylenol, and Aleve—which are mentioned as registered trademarks on the copyright page. Strangely enough, this rampant product placement is not even mentioned in any of the reviews. I can't believe anyone could miss it! ~ New ~ Pretty Little Devils -Nancy Holder This is a pretty bad book. The plot revolves around a group of popular girls in a high school and the girl who joins their clique. The book is told by a particularly distant omniscient third-person narrator. Hazel is the girl who joins the club of "Pretty Little Devils", but we know little about her. One of the things that drives me crazy about young adult fiction is when the young characters exist in a vacuum. How can we never meet Hazel's parents? When you are a teenager, whether you like it or not, your parents are part of your life. But Hazel comes and goes as though she lives in an apartment or something. Another thing that drove me crazy about this book is that the PLDs are popular, we are told, and everyone wants to be like them. But we don't see any evidence of why they would be popular, apart from being good-looking, and really, no one really appears to pay much attention to them. And though there are only four of them, they are virtually interchangeable. Cardboard isn't even the word—there must be something thinner. And it's very violent. There's quite a deal of very vicious violence, some towards animals, and for no reason whatsoever. A truly pointless book. All Other BadBad books come in almost every genre. Here are a few that I've read lately that have sucked in a big, bad way.I Don't Know How She Does It - Allison Pearson Oh boy. I don't remember the last time I read a book that irritated me this thoroughly. My poor sister, who lent it to me and had to listen to me outlining every one of the book's flaws in glorious, ranty detail. It'll be a long time before she lends me any more books. First, the positive: this book is an interesting look at modern motherhood. I'm sure some women's experiences are close to the narrator's and it probably really hit home for them. Personally, I'm not a mother and not working in the high-powered corporate world of finance and I found it enormously irritating. The main problem is that the vast majority of the book consists of the narrator whining about her life. Nothing pleases her, she doesn't appear to care much for her children or for her husband--she cares much more for her job. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but stop whining about how the kids love the nanny more than you. If you really hate your job, quit or find another, more flexible, job. And deal with not being able to buy expensive shoes that don't even fit. Also, Pearson is incapable of writing characters. Her characters are paper-thin, not even up to the cardboard variety. Her husband is a cipher, her children only exist to spout cutesy kidisms (and cry, in the case of the baby), her friends are completely insubstantial, as is her wannabe affair in NYC. You can sense that she's trying to create quirky characters (friend Candy from New Jersey, Winston the pot-smoking, philosophizing cab driver) but she's incapable of giving the characters life. The plot is practically non-existent and the bits of plot that do emerge seem hastily thrown into the morass of whining. I found it headache-inducingly annoying (though serviceably enough written), and I guarantee that this is the only book Allison Pearson has in her. I would bet money that we will never see another book published by her, despite her highly connected marriage to Anthony Lane of the New Yorker. Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind - Ann B. Ross I should like this book, I really should. It always pops up on lists of light, cozy reads, and there's nothing I love better than a light, cozy read. However, this book was just plain irritating. Miss Julia is an older (? elderly? who knows?) woman whose bank-owning husband has recently died when his longtime paramour stops by and drops off his illegitimate son. Miss Julia, who is not the most likable character I've ever met, is old and set in her ways and uninterested in caring for this little boy or anyone else for that matter. She's an old crank, really, and not in a charming way. I really couldn't get much of a feeling for the character at all. She was pretty inconsistently written--I couldn't get a sense of how old she was, and I never got much of a sense of her being a Southern woman. In fact, no one in the town seemed particularly Southern. It made me think of the great Joe Lansdale, and how beautifully he gives you a sense of place, and the people who live in that place (East Texas in his case), and Ross doesn't have that particular talent. And in a book like this, I think it's utterly necessary. Also, the characters in the town were thinly drawn, as well as being incredibly unlikable on the whole. Which brings us to the one likable character in the book: Lillian, Miss Julia's maid. Okay, remember when I was saying that no one in this book sounded or seemed Southern? Lillian seems Southern. She seems Southern in the way that the Bobbsey Twins's maid seemed Southern. If you know what I mean. Oh man. Here's a sample: "Miss Julia, quit scarin' that chile," Lillian rebuked me. "Eat yo' cake, honey, an' don't pay her no mind." And later in the same scene: "I hope you know what you doin', 'cause you makin' trouble for yo'self and ever'body else, now," Lillian accused. "Mr. Springer didn't have no legal children, an' you might be makin' a bigger mess than you already got." And she actually says, "Laws, laws" at one point. Hmm. As no one else in the book talks this way, I have to say it made me a little uncomfortable. This book was not cute, nor charming in any way. I read half and quit. Life is too short. Updated 3/30/07 Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Email me at carly[at]carlytown.com. |
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