Title: Skinny Bitch in Love
Author: Kim Barnouin
Publisher: Knopf
Rating: warty
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is shorter so as not to rob the writer of her story, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!
Skinny Bitch in love is told in the in the flirt person singular! A book critic, Paul Johnson, once wrote an article for the New Statesman reviewing the Ian Fleming novel Dr. No, a James Bond fable. The review slammed Fleming's work, and it was titled, Sex, snobbery and sadism" ("The New Statesman 5 April 1958). I could use the same title for this review, and the only adjustment I’d have to make is that of changing 'sadism' to 'masochism'.
I am the very last fan of pretentiousness, particularly when it comes to food and fashion, so this novel is not a no-brainer for me. I feel nauseated whenever I hear a French words substituted for a perfectly good English ones in those cultures: sous chef instead of under-cook, prêt-à-porter instead of off-the-rack, and so on. I even nauseated myself when I employed that very technique in a novel of my own Waterfall, though it was necessary there, in order to create a certain mood and atmosphere, primarily because that was, after all, an Anglo-French novel.
But when it comes to food, the English language has shown itself to be highly vulnerable to invasion. No one likes to eat dead pigs, but they love to pig out on pork! Butchered sheep is horrible, but mutton and lamb? No one would mind being fleeced for that, would they? Cow corpse is a turn off, but everyone has a steak in bar-B-Q! You see what I mean? Most us feel so guilty for slaughtering animals by the millions that we hide from it behind barricades of euphemism. This very real French disease is endemic.
Skinny Bitch in Love has a few too many tropes and clichés for my taste, and in the first dozen pages, too. There's the gay best friend, the woman who is so perfect but somehow her life is in the toilet, the overweight but canine-loyal and adorable best girlfriend, the injustice and betrayal, etc., but I chose to go with this because I wanted to know just what kind of a salad Barnouin had tossed here.
The protagonist, Clementine, is the under-cook at a vegan eatery which to me betrays everything about veganism by flaunting itself as snottily high class. I was a vegan at one time, when I was younger. I'm still a vegetarian (the only one in my family - immediate and extended), so I know a bit about the culture, its pros and cons, its bulls and bears and have a bit of a feel for how isolated Clementine must have felt as the story unfolded.
A high-class food critic visits the restaurant, and the food Clementine Cooper has worked so hard to prepare is sabotaged (there's another French word! The encroaching French-ism galls! Aargh!). Someone adds butter (a big no-no for vegans: anything derived from the animal kingdom is out, including dairy) to one of the dishes the critic is to sample. Emil, the owner of the restaurant hears immediately about this. Maybe he's psychic. He fires Clementine, and her gay friend Ty quits in sympathetic support. Shortly afterwards, she hears that Emil has fired the entire kitchen staff. Emil is a sadistic moron.
Clementine thinks a rival, Rain (there's a joke in there somewhere along the lines of "It never rains...", but let’s not go there), was the one who betrayed her, but Rain stopped that play, claiming Clementine is all wet. The butter was, after all, found at Clementine's own work station, and Clementine was evidently far too stupid to taste the food before serving it). Now Clementine is out of a job and resigned to the fact that she will never work in this town again - not in the food business, anyway. Now you understand one reason why I detest this food culture. So who sabotaged the meal? If I were writing this, it would be Ty just to break the mold (mold, kitchen? Hmm!), but I somehow doubt that Barnouin is going to diss her leading gay man. Maybe it actually was Clementine in an unconscious self-sabotage, to get her out of her rut. I honestly have no idea, because we spent so little time in the warm-up that it’s impossible to determine who in that kitchen is red-handed!
So Clementine decides to resurrect herself after failing to find work at a dozen snotty eateries where she applied. She decides to promote herself as a vegan personal chef and cooking guide, and she prepares fliers. Now this is all taking place in LA, BTW, so it does fly, but I'm far form convinced that posting this particular kind of flier on light poles was the best choice of venue. She did garner one response. Unfortunately it was from her ex-boyfriend of six months ago, over whom she still has painful feelings. He did pay her over two thousand dollars to teach him how to cook and to prepare a bunch of meals, but she had to put up with seeing him pretty much make out with the woman to whom he was planning on becoming married (yes, I know it’s far quicker to say fiancée, but that necessitates using another...aargh! Too late! I already let another mal mot slip in! Double aargh!
Clementine's next plan is to start a cooking class. She posts more fliers and gets three responders, including her roommate, at $400 a pop for a six week course (it's actually a six-day course, one per week). One major problem I noticed is that despite her being a chef and talking about preparing food all the time, not one recipe ever shows up in th novel! Not in the ebook, anyway!
So the first night of the class she has a librarian turn up who seems interested in Sara, and a woman who obsesses about her name being Eva, not Eves, not Evie, etc. Nicely done there - forcing us to focus on Eva's first name takes attention away from her last name! The class is interrupted by noises outside and Clementine discovers that someone is opening a steakhouse directly across the street and hanging a huge sign across from her window! Like an idiot, she goes over to complain about the sign and gets nowhere, of course, but the owner, who has the entirely original name of Zach follows her back over and signs up for her class (but never attends). He also hires her to create two vegan meals for his restaurant and pays her whatever she asks for her time.
Here's where this story goes rapidly down hill. The instant Zach arrives, Clementine devolves from a person I was half-way to liking, into a microcephalic teenager, feeling tingles in her extremities which in the real world would actually be an early-warning that some sort of circulatory malfunction is about to ensue. Oh, and I'm now convinced that I'm reading young adult fiction. But it gets worse! It always does when it goes there, doesn't it? Well, not always, but all-too-often.
So Zach is insistent that Clementine visit him at his home in the evening to cook these two meals so he can taste them before he accepts them as fare for his restaurant; then his phone rings and he's talking to someone he refers to as "Baby" on the phone. Clementine, readily led by the nose as she is, goes to his home - the home of this guy who she doesn't even remotely know, and who is well over six feet and probably weighs three times what she does. She starts preparing the meals, and they talk and then completely uninvited, He kisses her and she doesn't even make a deal out of it.
I'm sorry, but Clementine lost my interest and good will right there and then. This isn't a woman who is asking for trouble, this is a woman who is writing a scented invitation on vellum, with calligraphy, begging for a grease-trap full of trouble to come and shave her ass with a large-bladed meat slicer. They kiss again, and then "Baby" shows up - a hawt young woman who immediately and loudly announces that she'll wait for Zach upstairs in the bedroom, and he follows her like a butch in heat not even having the couth to remotely attempt the requisite placation of Clementine! And we know that Clementine will not learn her lesson. This novel isn't Skinny Bitch in Love, it's strutting, red-ass displaying, shameless and concupiscent Skinny Bitch in torrid heat.
I have some issues with Barnouin trying to anglify Alexander. I've never heard anyone refer to a a 12-year-old as a "bloke". But once I get on this kind of kick I can't stop, so let me mention one other writing issue and then move on. Barnouin describes what Clementine and Alexander do on their first date, and she mentions that they sat and "people watched". It was misleading and would have been better as "people-watched", so it actually conveyed that they were watching people as opposed to passers-by staring at them! Just a minor thing, but this is a writing blog as well as a reading blog so I’d be remiss if I didn’t pick up on these things!
I have a problem with Clementine's rejection of Alexander. Yes, you can write your character with whatever quirks you like and it would be insane to make every character the same, and have all of them perfect, but unless Barnouin really wants to render Clementine as one of the shallowest airhead female characters imaginable, is it actually necessary to have her decide that because her toes don’t physically tingle when they kiss, then she should peremptorily ditch Alexander as a prospect even though he's the best guy for her on present showing? If it’s the case that she's going to bow down to Zach the Bastard, as she's consistently doing so far, then I can only conclude that Clementine is a moron who deserves all she gets. Women like her are why other women end up saddled with a bad rep from guys.
It gets worse. The next cooking class descends into the girls giving Duncan the librarian advice about how to stalk his ex. Seriously?! The only way to deal with an ex is to let them go and move on. Most of us learn that the hard way. Clementine has learned it, but seems incapable of passing on that hard-won knowledge. Red roses arrive and they all think it's a gift from Alexander the Gray Area, but even I knew they were from Zach the Bastard - because, of course, every woman is so weak and dumb that she can not only be manipulated with pretty-pretty, but also bought and paid for with it. At least, that's the message Barnouin apparently wants you to take home.
The flowers work, of course, and Clementine is now Zach the Bastard's zombie for life. He dictates to her when, where, and how they will meet again (and he does this routinely) and Clementine she falls right into line and sees no problem with subjecting herself to this dictatorship. It was at this point that I wanted to delete this ebook, and go vomit, but I initially decided to stick with it to the halfway point and if it was no better by then, it would merit a warty! Curiously enough that means I need to read 69 more pages: how deliciously appropriate for Clementine's mentality! I entertained the idea of asking my wife to read this and give me her opinion, but my feeling is that she would reject this novel out of hand without even pretending she wanted to read it.
Clementine's dad gets sick, so her cooking session with Zach, which is about to devolve into her laying down for him, no questions asked, is over. Zach the Bastard offers to drive her to the hospital! Nicely calculated move. He sure has the vegan wool substitute pulled squarely over Clementine's eyes. So Clementine's dad is lying sick in the hospital bed, he might be slowly dying, yet the first thought Clementine has is to leave him and go find Zach, and then hang out at a bar with him instead of being with her sick father, lending moral support to her mom and her sister. I'm wondering who is more sick - Clementine or her father? I definitely do not like this woman now.
This scene actually made me acutely aware that Clementine is always in the servile position of going to find Zach; he's never looking for her. He merely sits and waits on her running after him, like he's the King of Siam. Don't worry, you'll bringer....
Well, now the only topic of conversation at Clementine's cooking classes is endless endless ENDLESS tales of Zach the Bastard. I'm sorry but this is nauseating. I sincerely hope that women in general have far going for them than disporting themselves like adolescent fangirls of wretched lechers, but that's the message Barnouin seems to be so desperately and dedicatedly endeavoring to implant within our minds: women have no existence outside of how they can serve and worship men, and they should not expect any such existence because really, they don’t have any right to one, do they?
Clementine flips off Alexander - now they're just good friends and Alexander apparently has so little self-esteem that he's fine with that. How many women have put how many guys through that? And how many guys return the favor? The short answer to those questions is: too many. Meanwhile at cooking class, the 75% of the class which has two X chromosomes agrees to stalk Duncan's ex girlfriend on his behalf. How sick is that? They complete their mission and determine that Duncan is SoL, but on their way out of the bar, they espy Zach the Bastard with his arm comfortably around a woman he's escorting somewhere.
Clementine agonizes over Zach the Bastard, expends not one single thought on her sick father. She has to learn from her sister Elizabeth that her father is on the mend! But of course that's not important because she has a plan for a new restaurant just a few doors down from where she lives. She focuses on how pretty it will look when it’s cleaned (by Sara) and decorated (by Ty). She evidently doesn’t plan on doing a thing herself save directing the others on what to do, and she gives not one ounce of thought to parking.
At least Barnouin has the cultural class to bring in Doctor Who! Props for that! It did perk up my interest briefly. Alexander calls her asking if she’ll bake and decorate some four dozen Doctor Who cupcakes for his sister's wedding. His sister is called Sabine. Really. After watching an ep of Nikita (3.2) last night in which Seymour unexpectedly impersonates a Dalek, I'm again amazed by how deeply this show has penetrated the psyche in the US.
Anyway, moving right along here! Sara is a fan of Doctor Who, so now I'm thinking: who really cares about Skinny Bitch? I want to read a novel about Normally-Proportioned Sara! How many times have you read a novel where the main character has a best friend and you find yourself wanting to read about the best friend rather than the main character? I find I'm doing that a bit more than I might have imagined I would since I've been reading YA novels lately. And after reading the disastrous Insurgent and now this, both in the first person, I have to reaffirm my decision to never read another first person YA or romance novel. Although I’ll probably be forced to break that resolution when something really cool pops up. If it ever pops up.
Clementine inexplicably resorts to avoiding Zach the Bastard. Not that she shouldn't avoid him in the long run, but after all that crap about stalking Duncan's ex, and advising her to close with Duncan, she now avoids closing with Zach the Bastard? What level of hypocrite is Clementine? She needs to tell him to drop dead, and then avoid him. Zach the Bastard is an expert at womanipulation though: he now resorts to employing Clementine's sick dad in order to force a response from her! And of course she comes to heel like a good dog.
A serious problem I have with Clementine is that she's so shallow that she lets that first kiss with Alexander dictate her whole attitude towards him. How pathetic is this woman? She acts like she's half her own age, and she's only 26. If Barnouin was actually going to get Clementine and Alexander together, then I’d have more respect for this novel, but having read what I've read so far, I have no faith in Barnouin's ability or intent to make that happen.
Zach the Bastard tells Clementine that the redhead he had his arm around is his fraternal twin sister. Okay. Again with the fraternal. Why is she his brotherly sister?! This isn't a fault of Barnouin's, of course, but it is a serious problem with our heavily gender-biased language. Note that I say gender-biased, not sex-biased, because sex has a host of baggage associated with it, which is also highly gender-biased. Pet peeve - what can I say?!
So Clementine goes to eat on the beach with Zach the Bastard and she dresses sexily, and pretty much wants to drop her panties right there in the sand. This reminds me of that old cartoon where a woman is buried in the sand and some enterprising guy asks her, "What's in it for me if I dig you out?", and her response is "Sand!" (and no, I'm not going to explain that for you!). On the beach, Clementine pretty much lets Zach the Bastard poke and prod her like he;s tenderizing meat, which, I guess, he is. She lets him get away with the most inappropriate things, given how young and tenuous their relationship is at this point. This is after she's had the hypocrisy to get on her friend Sara's case for jumping Duncan's bones! This is Duncan the Librarian who evidently read her like an open book and who might well be planning on returning her to the shelf now that they've had sex! How bad is it that I'm far more interested in how Clementine's business plans turn out, than ever I could be in what happens to that waste of a relationship called Zach the Bastard?
Unfortunately, Barnouin is trying to win me over by showing what a wonderful half-brother Zach the Bastard is. They go indoors, and as he and Clementine (who is all but down on her hands and knees, head buried in the couch, butt in the air for him like a Skinny Bitch in heat), there comes another knock at the door. It’s his punk half-sister Jolie, and her punk boyfriend Rufus, who have been cut off without a cent (I almost wrote scent there, but I figured most people wouldn’t get it) by their father, who's on his third wife (not literally, I assume, but in this novel who knows?), because she won't go to college - she wants to be an actor instead, and Rufus is in a band, of course.
So the night ends right there because Zach the Bastard, who instantaneously paid for three hotel rooms without asking, and Clem, who acquiesces to every whim he has, could not possibly, no way, no how, go to a hotel for the night - or part of it - and her reputation as easy is pretty much painted on her forehead by now, so why not? Without even showing her the respect of asking, Zach the Bastard dumps his 18 year old half-sister completely on Clementine and Sara for the next day, and Clementine meekly tugs her forelock and acquiesces. And so does Sara, but she makes Clementine come along on her audition that next morning because, since this is first person, we can’t really see what’s going on unless Clementine inexplicably goes along. So now I'm wondering who will get the job in the commercial: Clementine, Jolie, or both? I know where my money is.
I won the bet for once! Sara failed, Jolie got a call-back! And Zach the Bastard's cheap-ass attempt to dissuade her from getting married, getting her own apartment, and going into acting was a 100% failure on all fronts. So Zach the Bastard comes over and dumps on Clementine. He makes it clear that he thought that her crappy hovel of an apartment and her slow-lingering-death of a 'business', together with her lifestyle in general would completely turn Jolie off, but it had the opposite effect! Despite this insulting, rude and callous behavior, Clementine doesn’t even have the self-respect to throw him out of her apartment! He leaves in a childish fit of anger. Will she now dump this low-life jerk-off? I wouldn’t put Monopoly money on it. He'll apologize, send flowers or something, and she'll come running back to him, lay down, and spread her legs. This is an abusive relationship, and normally I’d feel bad for Clementine, but she's such a dumb, clueless, and shallow Skinny Bitch that I can’t find a lick of compassion for her. I can't. I honestly can't.
And this leaves me with a dilemma, because I really like Sara and Jolie and want to see what happens to them. So do I finish this or erase it now? Only Time will tell! Or maybe Newsweek! Hey: Fascinating idiom of the day: "...I waste fuel emissions." What the heck does that mean?!
I find it of note that Barnouin can embrace the French tongue when it comes to 'sous chef', but not when it comes to 'chaise longue'. She writes the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard 'chaise lounge'. Interesting. And so Clementine and Zach the Bastard finally leap into bed together without a thought or a word for STDs and condoms, because, of course, then it wouldn’t be smart fiction, would it now?
I decided to read this novel to the bitter end, not because of any merit intrinsic to the work itself, but because it would be unfair to Barnouin to reject this out of hand when I read all the way through the utterly detestable Insurgent (and especially since I specifically identified an ABBA song in that review, "Fernando", and that same song is identified in Barnouin's novel; what a weird coincidence!). This novel is much better written than Insurgent could ever hope to be, so props to Barnouin for her writing style, but it is equally dissatisfying in one respect: the female protagonist. I could neither root for her, nor wish her well when this vegan so willingly lays her neck on the butcher's block of an abusive romance which itself smells like rancid meat.
But I've written more than enough spoilers for this review, so no more of those! It’s Barnouin's story to tell, not mine after all. I did press on nails-on-chalkboard notwithstanding, and finished it despite having very little faith that I would really get any more about Sara or Jolie, but I had hope - which of course was dashed. What I didn’t know was if I could stand was to read even one more page about how big of a flimsy, threadbare doormat Clementine is for Zach the Bastard and how unrelentingly ineducable he truly is to her needs. Yes, it’s said that true love is work, but if it’s this much work you need to find a new career while your self respect is salvageable. I could never comport Clementine's self-respect in wanting to succeed on her own in her business with the complete absence of any self-respect in her relationship with Zach the Bastard. But you know what I really didn’t get? Why did Zach the Bastard even need a dog when he had a Skinny Bitch who would come to heel at his every whistle?
In summary, let me suffice to say that Zach the Bastard maintains his reputation, and Clementine is so stupid that she thinks Zach the Bastard is "complicated"! She has a perfect in with Alexander but treats him like he's a large portion of nothing, whilst simultaneously lying to herself that nothing about Zach the Bastard is easy! Her co-dependent relationship with this jerk is like a friendship between two spoiled thirteen year olds. It’s not remotely mature, but worse than that, it’s not even interesting; neither is it entertaining because it’s entirely predictable from the start, no matter how much of a nauseating roller-coaster ride is included in the fee. The relationship between Jolie and her fiancé Rufus is much more mature and far more engrossing. Even Sara's non-relationship held more raw entertainment value than anything that was written about Clementine's interactions with Zach the Bastard.
I cannot recommend this novel. It's an insult to thinking, self-respecting women.
