Rating: WARTY!
Note that this was an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher. Note also that this novel shouldn't be confused with EM Moon's 667. This one trolls a similar ocean in many ways, which seems peculiarly fitting for an author named Woodhull!
When I sat down and began writing this review, I was thinking it would be positive, because I'd enjoyed a lot of the novel, but I had also seen a lot of issues with it and what really changed my perspective was when I began to consider everything in total, and especially the ending. When it came down to it, I honestly could not, in good conscience recommend it, not when I've rated other novels unworthy for less. I may well be in the minority in this view, but all that matters is that I can honestly live with the views I express here.
The title was the first problem, because despite what it claims, the novel fails to actually itemize 667 ways in which main character Dagmar screwed-up her life. More on this anon. As for the wording of the title, I couldn't help but wonder why we put that asterisk in there in place of the vowel. As soon as someone sees "f*ck" they know it means "fuck" and it's that word, not 'f*ck' that pops up in their brain whether they're prone to expressing themselves in that way or not, so you still generated a four-letter word in their mind!
Maybe we like to make people swear even if they find it offensive, but it's not the word which really does the trick, is it? It's we who've secretly agreed to brand a perfectly good and venerable English word 'offensive'. Some of us agree that if we use it, we intend to sound offensive, and others agree that if they hear it, they'll be offended. It's a foolish game we play. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever from a rational PoV, but since when is language rational, especially in an election year? The truth is that it's all about shock value!
In deference to those who are sensitive though, I shall refer to this in the same way that one of the characters does: as "screw-up". I think it would have been more amusing had each letter been substituted, such as "$*@&-up" but that's just me. Be warned, though, that this is very much a highly questionable behavior and bad language novel, so if my previous use offended your sense and sensibility (for which I apologize), it might take a lot of persuasion to get you to read the actual book. As for me, I don't care about bad language in books in principle since it’s the way people talk and/or think in real life, so it’s not inappropriate per se.
As for the plot, it holds no mystery at all, so there can be no spoilers in this review. This story has been drive too many times to not need new tires and brakes before it's read-worthy: the decent, innocent, straight-shooting (or some such combination) girl gets fired by her caricature of a misogynist boss, and dumped by her jerk of a boyfriend on the same day.
How a woman with her potential ever got played into that position in this day and age remains largely unexplored (and I was glad of it!), but, but evidently smarts and self-respect got no casting-call. Anyway, she decides to change her life and predictably and magically, this leads to a better life and to the man of her dreams (Yash); however, she's been lying about things (in this case, her job and her name inter alia) when she first meets the guy, and finds herself inexplicably unable to avoid her lingering lies when the relationship deepens and then inevitably fails. Predictably, they then get together "romantically" and all's swell by the end bell.
To me, this play-acting wasn't Dag's major screw-up. The screw-up was that she failed to come clean with him as soon as she realized these feelings and this relationship were the one genuine thing amidst all the lies; worse than this, the author fails to justify her behavior. The major problem with this story then, is that Dag had absolutely no reason whatsoever to continue the lie, and this is where the novel began to fail for me because it became clear that the author wasn't letting the story happen naturally. She was like a show jumper who had a fine and spirited horse, but she wouldn't give it its head and trust it to jump, so fences were coming down all over the course!
Like a piano player who's been drilled too rigidly and never allowed to breathe the music or have any fun with it, she played the notes almost exactly as they'd been played by countless other artists before her, and never dared to set the melody free or improvise. That's why it felt so disappointing and unnatural to me. We got the predictable break-up and the equally predictable reunion for no other reason than a rigid adherence to a clichéd paradigm for this genre of novel.
That's when I lost the very faith in the author that she'd patiently built earlier. She made me hope for something out of the ordinary, and then deliberately stomped on that hope and killed it. Even as I feared this would most assuredly happen, I also entertained the fantasy that that maybe it wouldn't so at least in that regard, I went through the same thing that Dag did in her break-up. I doubt this is what the author had intended!
One of the things I had to try to overlook was that the title is rather fraudulent, as I mentioned earlier. There is no tally of 667 screw-ups here. This enumerated epistle which is added-to periodically throughout the novel (and which in some instances appears in place of the novel), is much more like a reminder list, or a list of observations or one of regrets, or of cute/inane comments/non-comments (items 541 through 547 I'm looking at you!) than ever it is an exclusive itemization of ways to screw-up.
For example #331 says, "My life had a forty-two percent rotten rating at rottentomatoes.com" which is actually getting on for fifty percent better than the Suicide Squad movie had, but it isn’t a screw-up in itself! It was funny, I admit. Some of them were, and I don’t doubt that such a huge list of ways to screw-up is do-able, but would it be entertaining? Hence the wimp-out list, which sometimes succeeded admirably. Other times it was simply intrusive, annoying, and trite.
There were many instances where several successive line items said pretty much the same thing if in slightly different ways, or which amplified an original thought:
320. Maybe I could write a literary erotic noveland this:
321. The hero threw the hussy onto the couch and grrfflsh ajdjdhdhha unnffffff-ed her
323. It was the hormones released from such good kissingThese are no more screw-ups than they are unique entries in the list, and the hormones motif was overdone, especially when it appeared in the form of "it's hormones, nothing more." If a male character said the same thing of a woman he wouldn't be allowed to get away with it unless the idea is to portray him as a complete dick, so how is it any better if Dag says it? That felt gratuitously insulting to me, and out of place in the novel that this aimed to be.
324. Such sexy, nasty, sweet kissing
325. The kind of kissing that kills everyone in a Shakespearean tragedy
Items 367 to 384 (excluding item 383) consist solely of the sentence "I was in love". Item 418 was "Ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa!" - hardly a screw-up unless it took place at a funeral or when being threatened by a gang member, and neither applied in this case. "474. He didn't even owe me bird shit" would have been funnier if it had read, "Unless it was bird shit". So yes, this title is dishonest, but it does have the benefit of standing out. This is an important consideration, since "One Way to F*ck Up" would never be as appealing a title despite being more accurate! But enough said on this score.
I have to confess I was concerned about Dag's drinking problem. At one point, she actually recognizes that she has a drinking problem, which is admirable, but she resolves only to give up daytime drinking and then promptly breaks that vow. She made no vows whatsoever related giving-up becoming the falling-down, vomiting, passed-out drunk (fortunately in that order), of which she was guilty. This is exactly why her drinking is a problem bordering on, if not embracing alcoholism since it's made repeatedly clear that it's alcohol, not friends, not exercise, not books (there goes literary!), not music, not crafts, not movies, not even food, but alcohol, which is her life-jacket when ineffectually opposing a sea of troubles. She actually abuses her best friend Mel, who sounded far more interesting to me than Dag became, although I was disappointed that Mel had nothing to say about Dag's drinking.
The story definitely took a serious downturn when she started stalking her ex and obsessing over him even more than she had before. That's when it was no longer romantic or a comedy for me. Had the genders been reversed and a guy was doing this, he would have been called on it by the readers if not by another character, so how is it any better that a woman is doing this to a man? It's not. It's neither entertaining nor is it funny.
Yes, Yash is being a bit of a jerk, so maybe this co-dependent couple really did deserve each other in the end, but at least he has cause for his behavior. She has no excuse whatsoever and worse, she doesn't even get that he needs to be left alone so she's compounding her main course of liar thermidor by adding a side dish of ass stalks. It made me really dislike her and negated any good feelings I'd entertained towards her from earlier.
But enough about meme; let’s talk about eupathy. The milieu of the story was a comfortably predictable one. It seems like whenever an author or screen-writer is aiming for a 'literary' story, they have their main character, who is typically a female, somehow involved with books. In this case, Dag is employed as an editor at a publishing company, but she doesn’t work on novels. No fear! She works in non-fiction - and there are no environmental dilemmas for Dag; it’s all about print, as though involvement with ebooks is slumming it.
More than this, the guy she falls for is a writer, and she predictably turns her web log into charmingly printable woodcuts. None of this is spoilers. All of it is inevitable from the premises. So well-traveled is the route that it's a rout, and more of a sow's ear than ever it was a silk road. The problem appears to be that if such stories were not so predictable, they likely wouldn’t garner for themselves such a predictable readership. Too few authors have the courage to take the road less traveled, even in an era when they do not have to beg Big Publishing™ to lend them that sow's ear.
This novel was too much an attempt at an edgy version of a Meg Ryan movie or more accurately, it felt like a remake of the Kate Hudson/Matthew McConaughey movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I know I've read other novels which have run in a similar rut, but none of those were impressive enough for me to recall a title off-hand.
Some of it rang rather hollow or odd, such as where I read, "sew destruction upon Taylor." I honestly couldn't figure out if that was simply a case of bad spelling (that no spellchecker would catch!), or if it was actually intended as a pun - you know, sew...Taylor, but since I hadn't really seen any devotion to puns in this story, I think maybe "sow" was intended? And we're back to the pig's ear pun! Just kidding! But don't you love the English language?
Dag's approach to agents and publishing houses to sell her blog made little sense (especially when it was loudly telegraphed beforehand who would get the nod), and it made less sense given what a huge following her blog had garnered. She didn't need any help at that point, and why would she even consider it given that her plan supposedly was to screw-up? It felt like both a sell-out and a continuation of the endless Mary-Sue moments she was improbably accruing without any effort whatsoever.
The fact that this option isn’t even discussed made me realize that it must have been voted down by this 'literary' paradigm into which the author had locked herself like the clichéd emotional bride in the toilet at the wedding. Traditional publishing dominates, and the small prints dons the crown! E-books don't get a look-in! At this point the novel had become a fairy-tale lacking only Prince Chakra, and we knew for a fact that he wasn't far behind, so there was no suspense here at all.
But the bottom line for me is whether the novel is worth reading or not. It's one way or the other. I can’t tell you that two-fifths of a novel is worth reading and the other three not. It’s either worth my time or it isn’t and in the end, this one wasn't. So while I did find parts to be an entertaining read, overall it was disappointingly unoriginal. I think changing the paradigm would have made for a much better read.
A problem with stories like this is when to end them. It's always better to end sooner, even if it's too soon, than to let write be dumb. That's a territory this one danced with perilously, in tandem with me dancing with changing my mind. My mind is a lousy dance partner though: it keeps stepping on my prose. I think the story should have ended, given that it must head in this tired direction, right at the point where he texted her, and that should have been the first contact of any kind he made.
End it right there and you're doing better than you are with an ending which keeps on going right on into an epilogue. I don't read prologues or epilogues, so I never did learn what the last couple of itemized non-screw-ups were and it doesn't bother me at all. I wish the author all the best with her career, and I believe she definitely has a voice, I can't recommend this expression of it.
