Family Trust, by Amanda Brown (2003)
Here is the dilemma I face as a reviewer: When I begin a book and can tell after only a few pages that I really, really hate it, do I have to keep reading in order to accumulate enough vitriol for a review? Or can I just say I hate it and move on? This is the problem I face with this book.
I hate it. It's stupid. "Becca's dark eyes shone with the electric heat of her intelligence and joie de vivre." And two pages later: "What joie de vivre! ...His blazing blue eyes shone at the thought of a glass of wine, as the eyes of a schoolboy would shine at a fire engine." I read only 14 pages, but I had dozens and dozens of crappy samples to choose from. I'm moving on.
18 Seconds, by George D. Shuman (2006)
Here is the premise of this book: A totally hot blind babe has the power to touch dead people and see their last 18 seconds of thought. This lets her assist in the solving of crimes. I was completely on board for this until they started trying to convince me that this was scientific, not mystical. Come on, you know you chose "18 seconds" because it makes a good movie title, not because it's the actual exact length of short-term memory.
In terms of quality, the novel is patchy. This is a writer who is still trying things out, with mixed success. I noticed this particularly when he was trying to establish a character: when he wrote the bad guy's thoughts about how much he hated those "rich bitches," he was losing me; but when he wrote about how the bad guy, whose job was roadkill clean-up, tossed animal ID tags into the incinerator along with the animals, when he was supposed to turn those tags in so the owners could be contacted--that gave me a real feeling for what kind of bad guy we were dealing with here. A good subtle detail like that gives a book major points.
I also noticed problems with word choice. When we meet Edward Karpovich, he is described as "A ruffled man in a long dark trench coat." "Ruffled"? If he's hanging around with his hands in his pockets, this can't mean ruffled as in harried. Does it mean he has ruffles decorating his coat? Is it supposed to be "rumpled"? This is not the kind of thing that should be stopping the story on page 2. Later, a man named Torlino "smiled and tried to roll his eyes." What was stopping him? He'd successfully rolled them two pages earlier. Later still, a prisoner named Sykes has "sallow flesh" that "sagged for lack of sun." Sun exposure is not associated with firm skin. Final example: two different guys think of a woman as "ever so hot." Who says "ever so"? Whoever it is, it shouldn't have been these guys.
We meet Miss 18 Seconds (Sherry Moore) and then lose her for a long time. It seemed as if the novel was going to be about her and her powers, but we soon switched over to Lieutenant Kelly O'Shaughnessy, a hot babe who is always being paged for right-this-second police work, but somehow never remembers to wear sensible clothing or at least bring a change of clothes in her car. When we finally see Sherry Moore again, we spend far too little time exploring her interesting power, and far too much time having everyone surprised that she's blind. Considering that all the news headlines reportedly said things like "Blind Woman Sees Dead," it should have been as much a part of her reputation as her babeliness--another overworked angle.
So you think I hate this book, right? No. I thought it was a really good idea that could have used a re-write and a good editor to make it even better. I think the author needs practice but has good stuff to work with, which is more than I can say about a lot of the authors whose books I nitpick to death. And I think the book is still worth reading despite the problems here and there.
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, by Eva Rice (2006)
Penelope is an 18-year-old girl living in the 1950s. Her father died in the war, and she lives in a gigantic, freezing, debt-soaked mansion with her young, vain mother and her pop-music-obsessed brother. One day a girl named Charlotte appears out of nowhere and invites Penelope home to tea. Penelope accepts, for reasons that are not clear either to us or to herself. This sets into motion a whole series of events, as you might expect.
The events themselves are unremarkable, even predictable. The flavor of the novel is appropriately fiftiesish: young people going wild for that rock 'n' roll music, young girl not realizing that she's in love or with whom, etc. It's a sweet little story, and it's not going to offend or surprise anyone.
The author loses a point for describing Charlotte as "the sort of person one reads about in novels yet rarely meets in real life," and later on as "like a character from a favorite book come to life," which does nothing but remind me that Charlotte IS in a book--not the effect I'd be going for if I wanted someone to be getting lost in the story. The author gains points, however, for having a character look at herself in a mirror and NOT use it as an opportunity to tell us what she looks like. When she got out her compact and examined herself, I was ALL SET to rain down the scorn--but then all she notes is that her hair needs combing and that she has an ink smudge on her chin. Well, and that her eyes are flashing back at her, defiant. But at least there was no description of a freckled nose that turned up too far, and long curly red hair, and eyes the color of lavender.
So is the book good, or isn't it? It did seem good, but on the other hand it took me more than a week to read it. Whenever I wasn't reading it, I didn't feel like getting back to it. There was no suspense at all, nothing to keep me wondering what would happen next or how it would happen. I felt like I could see down to the bones of the story, and all I was doing was marking time while it played out. Perhaps this is a better way to judge a first novel: would I read this author's second attempt? Definitely I would.
He's Just Not That Into You, by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo (2004)
Notice how long it took me to get around to reading this book. Do you have this problem too, this natural resistance to reading any book that has a HUGE fuss made over it? Especially a CATCH-PHRASE book? I knew what the whole book would be about, just from the title.
It's great, though. It's GREAT. I wish I'd had this book back in high school when I started dating. Even hearing the title two years ago, I had this fog-clearing feeling. After reading the book, it's such a relief to think back on things and understand what was really going on. He backed off because I was "too special" and he knew he'd be "bad for me"? I knew that was crap even at the time, but it's nice to have that well and truly confirmed. Asshole. I wasn't that into him, either.
When I first started reading, I was thinking that any book that comes with a refrain is not so much a book as a transcript of a motivational seminar, and I hate motivational seminars. In fact, you know what came to mind for the first few chapters? That Saturday Night Live sketch where David Spade and Helen Hunt are flight attendants who say "buh-bye" to each passenger, gradually upping it until they are saying really rude things such as "I'm gonna go ahead and serve you up a big ol' heapin' helpin' of BUH-BYE." (Note: Not actual quote. I am not the world's best Googler, and the transcript eluded me.) That's what a "refrain" book is like: practically every single paragraph comes back to the same point, which in this case is "He's just not that into you." And this IS a refrain book, in exactly that way, and yet it works. Why is this? Magic. It's magic, that's why. Some authors have it and some don't, and these authors do.
Here is what it taps in to: Every girl's fervent wish for a kind, handsome, cool older brother who will call her "kid" and tell her she's too good for that guy she's dating, and who will offer to beat up any guy who hurts her, and will in fact perhaps take the initiative and go do the beating up without offering first. Even girls who had actual older brothers wish for THIS kind of older brother. Greg Behrendt, handsome and tough and cool and happily married and all in black with his hoop earring and spiky bleached hair, fulfills this fantasy. Add in Liz Tuccillo in the role of the cool, sharp, understanding best girlfriend you always wanted, and you have a magical combination.
How can you resist them? They keep calling you "superfox" and "hot stuff," and telling you that you should think of yourself as a valuable, precious commodity, worthy of being chased and courted by a great guy who won't say he's not ready for a relationship or doesn't believe in marriage, and that if you break up with Loser McJerkington over there, you WILL find Princey McCharming. Who doesn't want to believe that?
The format is all these letters to Greg, who then answers every single one without fail by saying the guy in question is just not that into the girl in question. He's black-and-white on every issue: you should NOT be putting up with that guy's crap, not YOU, you succulent creature you. And then Liz writes about the grey: why it's hard to take Greg's advice even if you agree with it. It's a good balance: Liz takes away the creeping feeling that maybe we girls should not be allowing a guy to boss us around so strictly, and she provides some badly-needed empathy.
There was a big fuss about the book because it was GOOD, that's why. Sure, it's catch-phrasey; sure, it's black-and-white; sure, I can't say exactly how great it would be in application--but it's fun to read, and I really liked it. Jesus, will you just go read it already?
Plainsong, by Kent Haruf (1999)
This is not my sort of book at all. When I saw it on the shelf, I was not drawn to it in any way. Enormous sky, grey and cloudy, with a desolate mountain range way at the bottom of the cover? "A heartstrong story of tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver"? No, thank you, dear god no. But Sundry (http://www.sundrymourning.com/) liked it. And Richard Russo (Empire Falls, Straight Man) liked it. And so I tried it. And I loved it.
I was not sucked in to the story immediately. Because the prose was not in the style of the books I usually read, it took me awhile to catch the rhythm: "After a time he put out the cigarette and went upstairs and walked past the closed door behind which she lay in bed in the darkened guest room sleeping or not and went down the hall to the glassy room over the kitchen where the two boys were." The dialogue is written without quotation marks, which gives me a funny spacy feeling, like a dream sequence. It is difficult at first to figure out what is going on: I had the feeling that I had been dropped into a story already in progress, and that the author was not going to assist me in finding my way.
Ten pages in, I was feeling like it might be worth it to keep going. One hundred pages in, I was abandoning other projects so I could keep reading. I suggest you give the book a try, even if you think, as I did, that a book "as spare and heartbreaking as an abandoned homestead cabin" won't be your thing.
Life Laughs: The Naked Truth About Motherhood, Marriage, and Moving On, by Jenny McCarthy (2006)
I read Jenny McCarthy's book Belly Laughs, and I remember that several times I laughed so hard I nearly fractured a rib. I snorted a few times reading Life Laughs, but it wasn't the same.
The book was originally going to be titled Marriage Laughs, but while writing about marriage, Jenny McCarthy realized she didn't think hers was any good. She got a divorce and changed the title. Laughing yet? No?
Have you noticed that people who are recently divorced are not a barrel of laughs, or even a jam jar of laughs? They "make jokes," but the jokes they make are embarrassing and bitter, and they laugh too loudly and abrasively while everyone else looks away and tries not to make things worse. That is what it is like, reading this book. She makes fun of her ex-husband, and of her marriage to him, and of her ex-husband's new girlfriend, and you can tell she thinks she is being funny, but it is too soon for her to be funny about it. You're reading along and you feel the impulse to wince and look away, and maybe even stop reading so that when she's past this she won't have to worry that anyone remembers what she said. It started sounding to me like she might be sorry about the marriage ending, and covering it up with this painful attempt at derisive humor. This sort of thought process is not the result of an amusing, entertaining book.
I hated the illustrations. HATED them. They're male illustrations in a female book; not only are they ugly, it's a terrible clash.
Those of us who like Jenny McCarthy will still want to read Life Laughs for the details of why her marriage broke up, and to get a balance to all the stuff she wrote in happier days, and to learn whether she does, or does not, plan to have her anus bleached. (Hello, Googlers!)