Author: Gwendolyn Heasley
Publisher: Harper
Rating: WARTY!
I didn't get very far in this novel. The blurb made it sound interesting, but that just means that the blurb did its job. The real test is whether the book actually is interesting, and this one was certainly not. It should have been titled "Don't Call me Brainy".
The conceit here is that for over fifteen years (I may be wrong but I seriously doubt that cover model is fifteen! And why show her legs?), the rather pretentiously-named Imogene has been blogged by her mom - who is making money from the blog. The blog is Imogene's life, starting from when she was in the womb. In fifteen years and some, poor Imogene's mom has yet to get a clue how to raise her daughter, and has not the first concept that a kid entering her teens - let alone well into them - needs independence and privacy. She needs her own life.
That might have made for an interesting story, but get this: the book is written in first person by Imogene herself (so we're supposed to believe). Now this is a girl who is bitching and whining and moaning that her mother gives her no privacy because she's blogging her whole life, and yet here is that same whiny-assed kid writing this story, blabbing all of her personal details to everyone even as she complains that her mother is blabbing all her personal details to everyone. Take a minute or two to think about the incestuous irony of that.
I don't like first person PoV novels. They're the most absurd, pretentious, and unrealistic of all voices, and they normally irritate the heck out of me. Once in a while a writer can carry it and for those, I am grateful, but I sure have to wade through a lot of boneheaded novels to find the few, the happy few, the band of books, which are worth it. I've actually reached the point where even if a book does sound interesting I will, more often than not, put it back on the shelf if it's first person. This one, I made the mistake of not putting back. More fool me.
Apart from the uninteresting writing, one thing which really ticked me off was the gratuitous abuse hurled at vegetarians and vegans in this book. What an easy target. Kick them why not? That turned me right off, and it was at that point, the opening paragraphs of chapter four, where this juvenile insulting was at its most egregious, that I decided I wasn't going to waste any more time on this sad sack of an excuse for a story.
I'll let Sunder Lal Bahuguna make my case for me:
If you use one acre of land to grow meat...then you will get only 100 kg of beef in a year. If you grow cereals, you'll get 1 to 1.5 tonnes. Apples you get 7 tonnes. Walnuts 10-15 tonnes.
So think about it - in a world of starving people, who has the moral high ground: the carnivores or the vegetarian/vegan community? I can't recommend this pathetic trash.
