Author: Sharon G Flake
Publisher: Disney
Rating: WARTY!
This book cover has the Coretta Scott King Award logo on the cover even though this novel never won any such an award (and deservedly not). Flake's 1999 novel The Skin I'm In won that award and it looks like four years on from that she's still riding it. Either that or Big Publishing™ is. I've enjoyed and favorably-rated two of Sharon Flake's novels, the first just mentioned, and the other being Pinned, but this particular one turned me right off.
Money Hungry is a novella (less than 40,000 words, more than 17,500). I estimated very roughly that it was about 30,000 words - printed in a large font to make the book look fatter (way to go Big Publishing™!). It consists of absolutely nothing but girls being bitchy to one another, and of course, Raspberry Hill's obsession and infatuation with money. Her love is understandable in some ways. She comes from the projects and prior to that from the streets, but she's pretty clueless and doesn't seem capable of overcoming her cluelessness, so she's not endearing in the least bit.
She tried to make money by buying cheap pencils in lots and then selling them for 25 cents each. She tried selling old Valentine's candy, but it just made people ill. Never once did she concern herself about their illness, only about how it was cutting into her bottom line when she has to make refunds. Raspberry Hill isn't at all a nice person. Eventually she hits on cleaning people's houses with a couple of friends to make money, but this doesn't work out well due to aforesaid bitchiness.
Neither is her mother a nice person. One day she quite literally tosses a hundred dollars or more of Raspberry's money out of the window because she's convinced that Raspberry stole it, and she's too dumb and self-obsessed to listen to her own daughter. Her mother has a well-off doctor who is in love with her and with whom she enjoys spending time, but she will not marry him, and thereby condemns herself and her young daughter to these horrible living circumstances.
I grew up in impoverished circumstances. It wasn't as bad as Raspberry's by any means, but even so I found nothing to identify with her, nothing to like, nothing to admire, nothing to hope for. Not one of the characters was interesting or intriguing. The entire novel turned out to be a boring exercise in tedium which gives nothing in return for the reading of it. Afterwards, I felt like one of Raspberry's customers, who had bought that tainted candy.
