Marta Oulie by Sigrid Undset

Title: Marta Oulie
Author: Sigrid Undset
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Rating: worthy!

Translated from Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally.

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 less detailed so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more in-depth than you'll typically find elsewhere!

The novel covers much more than the lone topic of Marta's marital infidelity. It ventures deeply into feminism, it looks at morality, and it discusses the validity of religion, all in the context of what Marta and her husband are doing, how they're interacting, and how she's feeling towards him. Interestingly, Marta's lover, if he can be described as such, who is also Otto's business partner, hardly gets a look in. I found that rather intriguing.

This is very much a novel from Marta's perspective, told in first person PoV, which I normally detest, but which is not obnoxious here. That alone is commendable. It's annoying to have to pick novels without knowing from whose perspective they will be told (the blurbs almost never say - and I'm as guilty of this as anyone), so I always appreciate it when I inadvertently select one and discover that it's not nauseating!

On a technical matter, I have to say that while the Adobe Reader version of this is good, the kindle version is seriously hobbled by really annoying formatting issues. It looks like they simply took the PDF and dumped it unadjusted straight into Kindle format. Now you can argue that this is a "galley proof", and therefore we should not expect it to be perfect, but if you argue that, then I'm going to argue right back that while this novel is set in 1902, we are not! We're no longer living in 1907, when this was written, and novels had to be typeset using trays of metal characters laboriously put in place one-by-one line-by-line by hand! There is no excuse for sloppy proofs in this day and age!

Even rank amateurs have professional quality word processors, spell-checkers and formatting styles available to us! So no, there is no excuse for "galleys" that have line breaks in the middle of sentences or that have words like "UNCORRECTED" and "SALE" randomly mixed in with the text (the Adobe Reader version has "UNCORRECTED PROOF NOT FOR SALE" appearing on every page), or having one person's speech end and the next's take off with only a space (as opposed to a paragraph space) between the two separate quotations. If it had been corrected, though, I would never have enjoyed such amusing sentences as, "And I, the proper little merchant's wife who went around so nice and quiet, tending to my house, UNCORRECTED..."! Yes, this woman needs to be - as the butler put it in Stephen King's The Shining - CORRECTED! Or, "...my heart began to pound as a UNCORRECTED clammy sweat began to pour from my body..."! Correct that sweating, sister! Or how about this one: "It was a natural instinct that broke open inside me, raw SALE and insatiable." Yes, Marta Oulie sold out!

Known as Fru Marta Oulie in the original Norwegian, Undset wrote this in 1907 about a woman who was unfaithful to her husband, but it's not quite as simple a premise as it sounds. This was Sigrid Undset's first novel, but it was not her last. She enjoyed sufficient success to make a career out of writing, including a well-regarded trilogy which might be considered a fantasy story by modern audiences. Some of her life oddly paralleled Marta's. This novel is relevant today even as it seems understandably dated in some regards. It's relevant because there are still double-standards today, over a century later, in how women are perceived and treated in comparison with men. It's relevant in that feminism is just as much an issue today, when it shouldn't be, as it was back then when it was considered to be revolutionary.

You would think that over the course of a century these issues would have been long-ago resolved, and women would truly be equal, but it has not yet happened. It is easier to give voice to inequalities now than it was then, but it's also harder to be heard because ears have become lamentably inured to these issues over such a prolonged exposure. Feminism is no longer fresh in a culture which gobbles down fresh with an astounding voracity, and because it's not fresh any more, women have had to reach towards increasing extremes to get the message out. Consequently, feminists are now in danger of being mistakenly considered extremists instead of being correctly considered to be justified.

The novel starts out rather sensationally with the sentence "I have been unfaithful to my husband", which must have been far more shocking in 1907 than ever it is today. Had this been a modern novel, or even a modern historical novel, I would downgrade it for that. I think it has value in a 1907 novel; however, this did force me into a consideration of how this novel needs to be reviewed. Is it fair to review a 1907 novel by today's standards? There are arguments to be heard for either side. I asked this same question when I reviewed novels like Dracula, Frankenstein, and Pride and Prejudice. This is not a modern novel written in an historical setting, it's truly an historical novel translated into modern idiom. I think that latter fact is relevant: clearly those who brought this translation to published fruition think that this novel is relevant to our times, so reviewing it by the standards of our times isn't inappropriate.

In 1902 Norway, Marta is courted by and marries Otto. She tells us she loves him dearly. The two of them travel in Europe together (whilst Marta is a school teacher with commensurate salary, Otto is a partner in a business which is evidently doing well). They start a large family (by modern western standards), having two boys (Einar and Halfred) and then a girl (Ingrid), and it's with the arrival of the girl and the necessary simultaneous switch to larger accommodations that things begin to sour for Marta. It's not so much that Otto changes as it is that more of who he is starts seeping through un-modulated.

I don't know if Undset did this on purpose - juxtaposing the arrival of a girl (Ingrid, Otto's daughter) in the family with the attendant turmoil of lives being uprooted and moved around. If she did (and I am tempted to think she did), then that's pretty cool and smart on her part. Undset (which is reminiscent of 'upset' or 'unsettle' which is what this novel does) is a capable writer, but since this is a translation, it's really hard to know how much of the technical quality of the writing is due to Undset, and how much is due to her translator, Nunnally. Since I don't read Norwegian, I'll never know! However I take heart in the knowledge that even a bad translation cannot hide a decent plot! And no, this is not a comment on Nunnally's translation. Undset earned herself the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928 - the last Norwegian woman to do so to date. I'm not a big fan of "literary" novels or of stories written by Nobel laureates, but I would have to assume she's a capable writer even were I lacking other indicators (which I'm not!).

The stakes ratchet up as Marta starts an affair almost accidentally with Henrik, and he starts to feature more in her life until Otto contracts TB, whereupon she feels such guilt that she ends the affair, but continues with the pregnancy. Is it Henrik's or Otto's? The only way to tell back then was by recalling with whom one had enjoyed sex at the right (or the wrong!) time, and since Otto became sick, there has been none with him, so Åse has to be Henrik's. This comes in intriguing counterpoint to the birth of Ingrid: whereas Otto's daughter stirred-up things uncomfortably and was a contributing factor in Marta's falling into an affair, Henrik's daughter has the opposite effect - bringing the affair to a precipitous termination, and sending Marta back to her husband emotionally.

In the end, I don't like Marta Oulie (although I do like the novel), and the reason I don't like her is not because she betrayed her husband, but because she betrayed everyone, including herself, and cruelly so in Henrik's case, who has a daughter with Marta, a child who he will never be allowed to know. I hope this isn't 'the moral of this story': that if you betray your husband you will become lonely and miserable, indecisive and inert for the rest of your life, because that runs completely contrary to the feminist portrayal of Marta which colors the earlier portion of this novel!

Again, there are formatting issues at the end, with the story ending seemingly unfinished and very abruptly, and being followed without a break by some notes on Undset's life, yet the author's name is spelled with all lower case characters, which is not only inexplicable, it also seemed rather an insult. I mean why make a big deal about bringing this woman's writing to a modern audience if you're going to slight her in this way?! She's not edward estlin cummings after all.... The name of Marta's lover appears on more than one occasion spelled with a lower case 'h', which is hard enough to explain since it's something which is easily fixed with search & replace, but to trot out the author's name like that is downright weird! However, I am willing to rate this novel as a worthy read, in the hope that the final version will have these formatting and case issues resolved.

Paper Towns by John Green

Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Rating: WARTY!

This audio CD was read competently by Dan John Miller.

This novel, unfortunately told from first-person PoV, could be a lot worse, but it was getting there. Miller's narration helps, and the fact that the novel was amusing in parts also helped. The story hinges (and I use that word advisedly) entirely upon spineless Quentin Jacobsen's infatuation with his next-door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, who turns out to be a complete jerk.

Quentin is in fatuation with Margo, who shows up at his bedroom window one night demanding that he drive her around in his mom's van (he has no car) because she's had her car keys confiscated by her predictable, unadventurous, but also feisty parents, and she has eleven critical things to do that night (so she deludedly believes). The entire repertoire of criticality is inextricably entangled in Margo's juvenile need for revenge against a two-timing boyfriend, and she drags Quentin in on it with her, selfish much-adolescent-about-nothing that she is.

This plan having been more-or-less successfully executed, Quentin finds his life starting to turn around, but even as it does, Margo has disappeared. This isn't the first time she's taken off, and she's always left an impossible-to-follow clue before showing up shortly afterwards of her own accord, no less irresponsible or full of self-importance. This time, it's been six days with no word at all from her, and when Quentin discovers a whole series of cryptic clues, since he has no life and no self-respect, he obsesses on following wherever they lead, in hopes of tracking down Margo, and he starts to slowly come to the conclusion that maybe Margo has taken the biggest trip of all. Or has she?

Disk 6 wouldn't play in the car, so I skipped to disk 7 which turned out to be fine because disk 6 evidently had zero to say. Disk 5 ended with Quentin setting out to follow his last clue and disk 7 began with him arriving at his destination, which begs the question as to what value disk 6 was in the first place! Obviously none. Disk 7 was short and had a really unsatisfactory ending. I didn't like either invertebrate Quentin or Margo at all; in fact I think she's a jerk.

I can't help but wonder why Green insists upon making his female characters jerks. I've read two of his novels (all I am ever going to read, rest assured) and in both the female is a loser and a jerk. Is he a misogynist that he does this? Or is it simply that he doesn't know any better? Actually, the question which interests me more is why John Green went out of his way to call me a liar? Indeed, he called every one of us self-publishing/indie authors liars. In a speech which he made to the Association of American Booksellers in 2013 (of which I was unaware until very recently), he stated:

We must strike down the insidious lie that a book is the creation of an individual soul laboring in isolation. We must strike it down because it threatens the overall quality and breadth of American literature...without an editor my first novel, Looking for Alaska, would have been unreadably self-indulgent.
From Brit newspaper The Guardian

In short, John Green thinks we're liars if we say we did it all ourselves (not that your typical indie author ever does this in my experience). Guess what, Green behind the ears? I did it all myself and I know other people did too, and no, I am not lying. The question is why are you so insecure that you need an entourage to write your books? And yes, Looking for Alaska was self-indulgent so you failed and all of your team with you. Deal with it.

Secret Lies by Amy Dunne

Title: Secret Lies
Author: Amy Dunne
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Rating: worthy

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.

Amy Dunne was raised in Derbyshire, England, just like me, so how can I not review her novel?! Well, I wouldn't if it looked like it was boring or outside of my interest range, but I'd already decided that this one was worth a look before I knew from whence its author hailed.

I don't do book covers since the author usually has nothing to do with their design, and this blog is about authors and their writing, not about snotty publishers, illiterate editors, and artists who've never read the book they're illustrating, but I have to wonder about the title "Secret Lies" (as opposed to public ones?) which I assume is the author's, and the black band around that cover - how funereal! - which I assume isn't. Unfortunately, unless Dunne designed the cover herself, I may never learn the point of that, nor did I learn the meaning of the title! Maybe if I'm lucky, Dunne will visit the blog and add her own two pence in the comments? The girl on the cover is neither one of the two around which the novel revolves: the sleeves are way too short for it to be Nicola, and the hair is wrong for it to be Jennifer; she's wearing no wrist bands, either. See what I mean about cover artists never having read the novel? (I'll bet the model hasn't either.)

So this is, be warned, a very sexually explicit story of Nicola Jackson, an abused step-daughter with a weak mom and a god-awful stepfather (did you know that the German word for stepfather is Stiefvater?!) who seriously needs to be hung, drawn, and quartered. The sexually explicit partner is Jennifer O'Connor, a good - well...not so good - Catholic girl. She resents the relationships she feels forced into, in order to keep up her appearance as the hottest girl in school. These two bump into each other one morning on the way to school, after Nicola almost lost her virginity to said evil stepfather. They end-up skipping school and spending the day together despite being from different social groups, and despite never having spoken before that day. Their relationship takes off from there. I liked this story and found it a really easy read, but I do have some issues with it, that I want to take a few to explore.

My first concern is the simplicity of the writing. Sometimes that's a good thing, and in many ways it works for this story, but the feeling it left me with was that this story was written by a younger brother of one of the two main protagonists (both of whom are seventeen), and neither of them had such a sibling! Worse than this, though, was the all-too-ready resolution to everything, with no ragged edges, no loose threads, not a hair out of place. It was unrealistic, like a half hour TV sit-com, and it reminded me very much of some of my own first drafts. Given the starting points from whence the various characters launched themselves into this tale, it was really quite insulting for me as a reader to see the story travel the route it did, but having said that, I'm rating it as a worthy read because overall, it deserves it. Secret Lies deserves to be read and the author deserves to be encouraged to keep on writing because there was a real story here, and whilst it may not have been told in its best light, I'm hoping that the sophistication will come, and we'll get ever more and better stories from Dunne.

Meanwhile, let's look at the issues I had with this one as I review it. The first thing which bothered me was the improbability of the encounter between Jennifer and Nicola which led to the start of their relationship. It came right out of the screen-play for the movie The Cutting Edge with them quite literally running into each other, and the even greater improbability that they'd end-up spending the day together. They live in completely different worlds. Jennifer comes from a really nice home with loving (if somewhat naïve and ignorant parents) whereas Nicola comes from a lowly and (more!) dysfunctional home. I don't get how it is that they would run into each other on their various routes to school, since it's strongly implied that they're not exactly neighbors.

I can see pathways by which the two of them could reasonably have come together (so to speak!), but I didn't see that happen here, so it was a bit too much insta-friends for me. As I said, the two have never spoken before, and Jennifer is a bit of a snob (in high-school terms), hanging out with the rotten-end of the higher-class students (pupils? Whatever they call them in Britain these days!), so her path literally and figuratively never crossed with Nicola's. Indeed, Nicola is an outcast at school, wearing strangely inappropriate clothing for the weather (and there's a good reason for that) and spending all her time by herself there. There was too abrupt of a shift from being completely alienated from one another, to being acquaintances, to becoming fast friends. It seemed way too fake and amateurish to me, but the story itself turned out, despite this poor start, to be really quite interesting and engaging. It made me want to keep reading, which is all I require from an author, let's face it!

I do identify with Nicola though, coming from the lower end of the scale myself. I was never beaten, so I can't claim to know what that's like, but I did have really strict parents who were not known for refraining from slapping their kids, and from whom I felt quite alienated most of the time, so I feel like I have a foot in her door at least.

Which brings me to the respective issues from which these girls suffer. I didn't quite see the point of having both of these girls be the way they were, one of them appallingly abused, the other abusing herself. I know that offers a route towards friendship by having them both have secrets, but why make this the starting point? Other than to get them together, it didn't seem to play any role in the story at all (apart from one overly-dramatic later incident), so why not make them much more average people? That would have had a far greater impact for my money. Putting them in this position seems to me to serve to create more obstacles than it serves to knock down fences.

Jennifer is a cutter who is trying really hard to divorce herself from that behavior with the help of a therapist - about whom her parents evidently know nothing. That's one thing, but she's also had some bad, even shaming sexual encounters with sadly trope-ish boys, which offended me for its genderism: as though a girl can't be lesbian without having had a rather abusive experience with a boy, and there's no such thing as a sensitive and decent boy anyway, so why not be a lesbian! It's almost like Dunne is trying to justify lesbianism by blaming it on uncouth males. I found that offensive on several levels, and dishonest with regard to lesbian motivation. Queers are queer because that's the way nature made them, not because some guy or some girl somehow "warped" them that way!

I have a book on my groaning library shelves titled The First Time by Karen Bouris, who interviewed some 150 women about losing their virginity, and many of them had a bad experience (which I think is more than adequately explained by society's god-awfully repressive attitudes towards sex!). I have no way of knowing how representative a sample this was, but it seemed to me that many of the women who were interviewed and who are lesbian, had a bad sexual encounter with a guy before they settled on their preferred sexuality.

This struck me as interesting, but in no way can it be deemed to be diagnostic, definitive, or causative! It seems a bit of a cliché (and a stereotypical male wishful-thinking cliché at that) to have Nicola take this road-less-traveled because lesbianism is 'nothing more than a result of a bad heterosexual encounter'! Sexual preference needs a hell of a lot more respect and realism than that. I'm not saying that Dunne believes this, or that she's trying to suggest or promote this agenda, just that writing this way might put the wrong idea in some people's minds, or imply things which were not intended. Then again, it's Dunne's novel - she can write what she likes, and I wouldn't try to suggest that no queer relationships ever began like this.

I can see that Dunne needs a way to bring the two of them together, and that she's doing this by giving them common ground to meet upon; it just seemed a bit clunky to me. I'm not the writer of course, so it's not my choice, but this overkill in background story detracts too much, for me, from the main story which is coming, and which is the reason I'm reading this!

So having spent the day together, Jennifer invites Nicola to stay over for the night when she learns that her new-found friend has left home and has nowhere to go. They make up a lie to tell Jenny's parents which improbably nets them a month together. It's early that evening that Jennifer accidentally espies the burn marks and bruises on Nicola's back, where her stepfather has stubbed out cigarettes. This, of course, leads to confessions and revelations, and eventually the two of them discover the truth about each other, and that truth is that they're falling in love.

This is a bigger problem for Jenny than for Nic, who has nothing to lose. Jenny has her mom and dad, staunch (not stanch!) Catholics. Jenny at this point is living much more in fear than Nic is, which was a fun reverse direction for this story to take. And talking of fun, there wasn't much humor in this novel. Yes, it's a serious story about serious things, but that lack of a fun element with these two young characters, both of them awakening to a brilliant and totally unexpected new love, was a bit glaring. The "stupid o'clock" comment at the start of chapter 25 was hilarious and every much appreciated, but that was it for notably funny bits, and I couldn't see that two Brit high-school girls like this wouldn't have more humor going on than they did, even given their circumstances.

Also, Nicola seemed to come out of her repressed shell far faster than seemed realistic given what she'd been through. In fact, the entire relationship was surprisingly just like any relationship I've read about, homo or hetero written by male or female writers, which struck me as odd, given the premise that both of them had these secrets and both secrets were way off the beaten track for most relationships. I mentioned this earlier - that the cutting and the abuse were merely a starting point, and played no part in the rest of the relationship, and this seemed to me to be a betrayal of those things - cheapening them into insignificance. I found that sad. Indeed, the pointed focus on the sexual rather than on anything else was a bit disturbing, too. I was expecting something rather different here, given the characters were coming out not only to each other, but to themselves, and given the awful back-story secrets they both had, but that was never delivered. It was like their sad pasts were magically washed away and mattered no more.

Then comes the evil stepsister - actually not even step, just sister (of Jenny's) - who seemed really odd to me. She went from being hugely vindictive, exhibiting stalker behavior, to total unconditional acceptance of Nicola and Jennifer pretty much literally overnight which was entirely unrealistic, and which stood out rather glaringly and amateurishly.

So why am I not rating this warty? Well, as I said, I liked the story, and I'm willing to forgive the writer a lot of warts if they tell me a worthy tale. I freely admit that Dunne really pushed me to the limit of what I would put-up with, and if the story had not been the one it was, and Jenny and Nic not been the characters they were (and Dunne had not hailed from Derbyshire, of course!), I might well have been nudged over the other side of the fence. I don't do stars, you see, so a novel is either a worthy read or it's warty to me, and this one is worthy, because I liked it despite a few warts, and yes I'd be open to reading more by Amy Dunne. Indeed, if she's looking for a truly independent (apart from the Derbyshire connection!) beta reader, I volunteer right here and now!

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Rating: WORTHY!

This is going to be a much shorter review than I normally give because I already reviewed the movie version of the novel. The two have a lot of similarities, but also a lot of differences. I liked the movie version much better, but I still liked the original novel enough to rate it a 'worthy' read. The novel is quite different from the movie in many ways, while following the same overall pattern. It has different events in it and a lot more four-letter words. I liked the Nick of the novel slightly better, and the Norah about the same, but I found the humor in the movie better. The movie screenplay was written by Lorene Scafaria, so kudos to her for carrying that off so well.

To the differences! In the novel, it's Nick who asks Norah to be his girlfriend, quite the opposite of the movie. In the movie Caroline (Norah's drunken girlfriend who Norah hands over to Nick's bandmates to get her home) escapes and runs away, fearifn she's being kidnaped, but this doesn't happen in the novel. In the novel, Nick and Norah make out in the ice room of a Hilton Hotel, but they don't go all the way, whereas in the movie, they go all the way in a recording studio owned by Norah's dad. In the novel they don't go anywhere near the recording studio. The novel features fewer locations than the movie, too.

The novel has chapters numbered sequentially, but alternatingly headed either with Nick's name (written by Levithan), or Norah's name (written by Cohn). Nick's band is called the Jerk-Offs in the movie but The Fuck-Offs in the novel - I did warn you that it was more foul-mouthed than the movie! The novel does get us a lot further into Nick and Norah's heads than is ever possible in a movie, but not all of that is a good thing. There's a lot to love but also quite a bit to dislike when you get that far into their heads. In the end, if I had to choose, I'd have to pick the movie, but the novel is well worth reading.

Beta by Rachel Cohn

Title: Beta
Author: Rachel Cohn
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

Beta is by the same writer who wrote the novel behind the movie Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, the movie of which I reviewed not long ago, vowing to find the book and read it! My hope when starting this was that it would turn out to be as entertaining as that was. This novel is probably what gave some impetus to Karen Sandler's Tankborn because they both share the same kind of premise, but Beta was published four years before the latter.

And what is the premise? The premise is that at some point in the future, and perhaps not even on Earth (yes, it's that vague!), there's an island named Desmesne (Deh-MEZ-nay, believe it or not) where the very rich reside. It's a hedonistic island where the rotten rich are spoiled rotten. One way in which they're spoiled is that they can buy (yes buy) what are referred to as clones to do all kinds of things for them - from housework to massage, to companions. These 'clones' are the creations of Doctor Lusardi, who can make adult 'clones' without any trouble at all, but for some unexplained reason creating children is problematical. The so-called clones (more on this confusion anon) are marked with a fleur-de-lys tattoo on their right temple, and their purpose is defined by some other botanical tattoo on their left. Elysia (El-EE-zee-ya) is a prototype teen 'clone' referred to as a Beta because this technique is not perfected, although it looks like Elysia is perfected since she's fully functional and described as pretty-darned-near perfect in every way.

When a 'clone' is created, the "First" (the person upon whom the clone is based), 'has to die'. This was very poorly explained to begin with and led me to some confusion about exactly what was going on, and what, exactly, 'has to die' meant. At first I thought the "Firsts" were deliberately killed, but then it seemed like the clone was taken from someone who had died from some natural or accidental cause, but there are cases of people voluntarily giving up their life to become a "clone" so their family can be paid a handsome sum in return. None of this made much sense! I had a real problem with terming this cloning, though because of the confused descriptions Cohn hands out so miserly. If it's a true cloning process, then this makes no sense: since something can be cloned from any cell (in theory - Dolly the sheep, for example, was cloned from a mammary cell, hence her name), there is no need for the clone cell donor to die.

Elysia is quite literally standing around in a store awaiting sale when the island governor's wife, Maria Bratton, wanders in to look at clothes. She takes a real shine to Elysia, who becomes an impulse buy. Elysia is thrilled at being bought because it means she's serving her function. This early excitement is completely at odds with her later behavior. As she rides home with her "Mother" she reveals in a flashback some details of her creation. She was cloned as a full sized teen, not grown from a zygote as was the sheep and other clones we have created irl. When Elysia was done "cooking" she had a chip implanted in her head which provided her with a functionality specially tuned to her designated purpose in life, which in Elysia's case is 'companion'. She also has a tracking chip in her arm.

How this 'full grown clone' operation works is conveniently skipped over. although there is a revelation at the end of the novel which is interesting. The human body is quite simple when looked at as something grown from a single cell: we're basically little more than a bony worm after all. The genome is a recipe for a living thing and there's nothing miraculous about how it develops sequentially; however, to create a full-sized human body from scratch without it growing according to its genetic recipe is a task of huge complexity. This isn't what they do in this novel, but it takes an annoyingly long time for Cohn to clarify this, and even then she's so vague about it as to be annoying, still!

Since nothing is explained, I was forced to cast around a lot to try and figure out what was going on, which really detracted from my reading experience. Eventually I came to the understanding that this isn't cloning in any way, shape or form, so why Cohn misleadingly used that terms is a mystery - and an irritating one at that. What seemed to be going on at that point was a variety of Frankensteinian reanimation, with Elysia occupying the original body of her 'First' which has had nothing more than a brain make-over. There is talk of souls, which not a scientific topic (there's no evidence that anyone has an immortal soul) even though Cohn treats it as such. I find that a bit strange and Cohn herself seems to be sadly confused about what she means by 'soul'. Cohn is a Jewish name meaning priest. Now I have no idea what religion, if any, Cohn practices, but I assume with her name that she might know something of her Judaic heritage, and this concept of eternal life is not really an overriding part of Judaism as it is in Christianity.

There really isn't any talk of souls in the Biblical Old Testament, which is essentially all about land-grabbing and massive slaughter. The out-and-out obsession with an afterlife is only developed in the New Testament, but in Beta the soul is a scientific part of life, and exists only in real humans, not in their 'clones' we're told. This means that the body Elysia now inhabits is actually the very same body her 'First' occupied, but her first cannot be brought back to life because her soul has "gone on" apparently. At the end of the novel I learned that I'd been misled even over this! The technology of the novel is up to the task of reanimation, however, which is how Elysia came to be. But there are problems even with this!

Elysia is an interesting character, and her observations are amusing to begin with. Her placid acceptance of her role in life combined with her compulsion to meet her owner's expectations fully is as endearing as it is disturbing. What's also disturbing is that when she joins her siblings (a teen boy and a younger girl) in the governor's swimming pool, Elysia discovers that she's a natural born athlete, but when she immerses herself in the water, she has visions of a guy talking to her and swimming with her: a guy who she thinks she recalls from memories leaking over from her 'First'. She is (or was) in love with this guy, yet she has no problem ditching that supposedly loving and passionate god-like guy for someone else with whom she thinks she's in love, and then in ditching that someone else, too! That's how shallow she is.

This memory leakage is problematical for me. If Elysia had been a true clone, then it could not have been possible to retain memories, because your genome doesn't perform this function. Yes, DNA can be thought of as being a species' memory, but that's not the same as an individual's personal memories, which is merely a conjugation of chemical states in the brain; once that brain ceases to function, those states decay and your memories - you - are gone. This loss includes your soul, since that's nothing more than a chemical state in your mind. So a true clone cannot possibly have memories from the organism which donated the 'starter' genome.

But if Elysia is a reanimated corpse, memory leakage is still not possible, for if the memories had been intact, then the body wouldn't be dead and it would still be the 'First'. If the body had truly been dead, then those memories would be gone and not available to Cohn's plot for leakage purposes! This, of course, revolves around exactly how the corpse is reanimated, and if technology is so good that it can do so, then why did the original mind (soul if you like) become lost? Since Cohn is so vague, she does leave herself some wiggle room: whilst most of the 'First' was gone - that is the chemical states in her brain which made her who she was - it is possible, dependent upon how the heck this process works, that there could conceivably have been some chemical states which were retained, although IMO, these would be so disjointed that any coherent memory would be nonviable, which again defeats Cohn's purpose! Well, I've rambled enough. Back to the tale!

Elysia's household duties are soon quite sharply defined. She exercises with her 'brother' in the mornings. Ivan, for reasons unexplained, is heading for military college. Now I say reasons unexplained, because I don’t consider 'because dad was in the military' to be a reason in the context of this novel. If Desmesne is perfect, then why is there a need for a military? If the military is employed away from the island, then why would anyone on the island care about it or volunteer for it? What exactly is the threat for which the military exists? And if it’s needed, why is it not populated with 'clones'? This is one of many things which go unexplained in Beta.

We're given to understand that the governor is not a legitimate resident of Desmesne, and is only there by reason of his duty as governor, so this is a possible explanation, but it doesn’t seem to me to be a very good one, and we’re pretty much left in the dark on this topic as we are on so many others. Having said that, there is a bomb-blast on Desmesne, which weirdly doesn't freak anyone out anywhere near as much as it ought. No one was killed and it's all soon forgotten! Elysia's acquaintance from the store - the other beta teen, named Becky, who was on sale with her, but who apparently was never bought - is charged with the incident and sent to be dismantled and analyzed. This chills Elysia, because she has seen the "infirmary" with its clone body parts lying around inside, and clones being experimented upon.

When he's not prepping for military college, Ivan is focused completely on video games or on doing drugs. Ataraxia ('raxia) is the drug of choice (technically, ataraxia is merely a state of bliss, and the drug is named after it because it supposedly delivers such bliss). It’s made from an extract from the seeds of a local plant, and Ivan is starting to experiment with producing his own. The indulgence of a large portion of Desmesne's population in 'raxia is interesting given that they're all supposedly already living in the lap of luxury. But all is not well, as the maid Xanthe, at the governor's house reveals. She and Elysia start trading confidences, and Elysia learns about the discontentment amongst the clones, and about "Insurrection" - apparently some fomenting rebellion. She's also hit upon by the governor himself, and rescued by Ivan the not-so-terrible, which makes his behavior later completely out of character - another problem with this novel. When Xanthe is discovered to be a "Defect", she's unceremoniously tossed over the cliff by security personnel at the governor's home. This is a warning to Elysia to clam up about her condition, but she doesn't heed it too well.

When she's not occupied with Ivan, Elysia is required to spend time with Liesel, the young daughter of the governor and his wife, playing games with her, and comforting her if she wakes from one of her nightmares. Elysia is also required to spend the afternoons with her Mother acting as a companion and personal assistant, but she gets free time during which she hangs with Ivan's teen friends. She's sent on drug runs for these people and plays sports with them - sometimes dangerous sports. It's during this time that she meets Tahir, a dark-skinned teen son of the richest family on Desmesne, who has just returned from convalescence occasioned by a serious surfing accident. Tahir is a whole episode to his self.

It turns out (and here's a huge spoiler) that Tahir actually died in the surfing accident, but was resurrected by Doctor Lusardi's 'cloning' technology. He is an illegal clone replacement for their son, sanctioned and created by Lusardi herself. I actually saw this coming, but not until shortly before it was overtly revealed. The signs are there, however, in retrospect. Elysia is falling for Tahir, although there’s no earthly reason given for why she should. When she's sent on loan to his family for a week, they get to know each other very well. She confesses to him and to his enlightened parents that she is a "Defect" - and therefore ought to be given the same treatment as Becky by the laws of Desmesne - but the family accepts her as she is. Her affection for Tahir is cemented one evening with a kiss, but Tahir cannot feel affection for her in return, being a 'clone'. Elysia resolves to teach him how. Good luck with that!

So once again we're back to what, exactly, these clones are. Until Tahir, I had understood that they were not clones, but reanimated corpses; however, Tahir's story seems to make it clear that this isn't the case at all: they are indeed clones, but the process is maddeningly not explained, not even vaguely. This revelation (or clarification, if you like!) brings me right back to a question of believability - as to how Elysia supposedly has retained memories. Tahir has none and is far more of a beta than is Elysia even though he has his own memories in his chip! He did not retain anything like Elysia did and cannot feel emotion as she does. For some reason during this week with him Elysia undergoes a transformation from placid clone to antagonized rebel, and none of this works for me, because we’re given no valid reason why she should suddenly start thoroughly detesting all humans. She discovers nothing, is exposed to nothing, and is given to feel nothing which she had not already discovered and felt beforehand, so why now and why so extreme? Such a magnitude of change is simply not credible given what we’ve been told.

It’s also entirely inexplicable how almost instantaneously devoted she is to Tahir, but as soon as he's forcibly removed from her picture, she gloms on to Alex without so much as a by-your-leave and with equal passion! Tahir is forgotten and she's placidly subjugated herself to Alex! Honestly? So she hated being subjugated as a clone, but being a love slave is fine? And the number of times Alex is described as "muscled" and "chiseled" is truly, honestly, and irritatingly pathetic. You have to wonder what Cohn is doing with her life for her to write this repetitively and obsessively. Reading this, I found it hard to believe that this is the same Cohn who wrote Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Although now I think about it, she didn't write it - not the movie. She co-wrote the novel and Lorene Scafaria wrote the screenplay (yeah, I had to look that up!). So now I'm wondering if I even want to read that novel!

I have to confess that I had some really mixed feelings about this story. Sometimes it was entertaining and amusing, yet other times it was a bit tedious, but what really tossed it into the trasher for me was how much of an airhead Elysia turned out to be! Rather than make her own mind up about things, which is what I mistakenly assumed was the point of this tale, she proves herself to be completely reactive, not proactive, subject completely to whim, tossed around in the tide of whatever is currently going on around her! She's so capricious. She goes from being this placid, easy-going person who fits in and strives to please, and who is treated rather well (for a Clone), to the complete opposite in zero seconds flat with no apparent acceleration or deceleration curve.

It’s like she's one thing one minute and inexplicably the diametric opposite the next without any good motivation offered for this voltafaccia. Yes, she spent time with Tahir and this gave her a wish list which she didn't have before, but it doesn't explain her out-of-control behavior. It doesn’t help that Ivan rapes her, of course, but it helps even less that after that coercion, she's pressured by two people she only just met, to keep the child and she placidly goes along with their demands instead of making up her own mind.

If it were not for one thing which happened at the very end of the novel, which really did put an interesting spin on things for me, I would have been happily ditching the entire series, but now I want to read volume two. This doesn't mean. however, that I'm prepared to rate volume one as a worthy read. I am not! It's warty.

The Prelude by KaSonndra Leigh

Title: The Prelude: A Musical Interlude Novel
Author: KaSonndra Leigh
Publisher: KaSonndra Leigh Books
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.

Errata
P12 is missing a close quote after "Do we have a deal?"
P34 "She prances right up to where Luca Martuccio's sits."? "...where Luca Martuccio's party sits" maybe?
P71 "respond back" tautology.

I didn't like this novel at all, which makes me feel bad because I want to support independent publishers. I was put off it very quickly, and while I did try hard to read all the way through it, I found myself skipping sections because they were simply uninteresting.

Erin Angelo is the female protagonist who narrates the opening section, and she had lost my support by p13 when an "Adonis" walks in: Aleksandr Dostovsky. His mouth is "a heart-shaped ode to sex". Honestly? I just cannot picture a guy with a heart-shaped mouth in a frame designed to hold a picture of a great lover! It just doesn't work. I can picture a "French fop" from an historical romance with a heart-shaped mouth. I can picture an adorable infant with a heart-shaped mouth. But a leading man? No. I'm not sure what I expected with this novel, but I did expect more maturity and class than this, especially given the Italian opera angle. Are we being told an actual story here or are we merely the uncomfortable audience for an author's 222 page wet dream? Perhaps it would have been better titled Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Porn?

"Adonis" tells us that he likes to be called Alek Dostov, although that sounds more like something an American would say than a Russian, and we're offered no real reason to believe that a man like him would shorten his name for the convenience of others. But his "god-like" accent turns Angelo on, apparently stirring things she hasn’t felt in ages. Unfortunately, stirring things like that tends to bring a lot of murk and pollutants to the surface. This does bring on a full-blown asthma attack in Angelo, but she still manages to speak in complete sentences! Yes, she's that amazing!

He gets her inhaler, she gets to suck, and she's finally able to obsesses on his eyes, telling him they're unusual; then she checks herself and apologizes saying that it was inappropriate! This is after this stranger has been stroking his thumb along her cheek and she saw nothing untoward about that! Talk about double standards. And why make Dostov Russian, but then refer to him in terms of Greek gods? Why not just make him Greek? Unemployment is sky-high in Greece right now. A Greek guy looking for work abroad is not an uncommon thing at all.

Angelo is in love with his accent. He says "Did I not?" and she hears it as "Deed I knot?" Maybe it's just me, but I don't see how 'not' is different from 'knot' in pronunciation. You can argue that those three particular words actually mean something else and this is what Angelo sees, but that's not how Leigh conveys it to us. Or if that's what she intended, she ties herself in knots trying to do it! Neither is Dostov a 'maestro' as he's referred to all-too-often. No one at 23 gets that appellation. Maestro means something. It's an insult to music to toss an honor like that away, and it's a betrayal of what Leigh is supposedly trying to do with this novel.

'Maestro' doesn't mean stud, or tough guy, or sex god, or even heart-shaped mouth; it has a real meaning related to music (usually) and Dostov has no cred whatsoever in that regard. What's he done? In 23 years he has not put in anywhere near sufficient time to earn such a title. Nor are we ever treated to any kind of explanation from Leigh as to why he should carry such an honorific, or what he could possibly have done to merit it at so youthful an age.

Bear in mind (or given 'deed I knot' above, perhaps 'baring mined' might be more accurate?!) that this is obviously the guy who's being introduced as the instadore du jour, yet never once does Angelo consider being completely honest with him at their first encounter. She could have explained to him that the supplier had sent the wrong color fabric, and he could have found it refreshing that here was someone who was willing to be completely honest with him given the life he's led. This would have been the perfect opportunity to remove this novel from the "Twilight" zone and put it somewhere these tall tales seem to have an insurmoutable problem in going: into honesty and authenticity, but Leigh doesn't take us there. If Angelo had been completely honest with Dostov right there and then, that would have offered the possibility of a bond, shameless bond(!), being forged between them: something which might have led to a love rooted in something other than developmentally-retarded adolescent fantasy. As it is, Leigh looks like she's writing young-adult chest-pounding romance, betraying the entire genre in the xiphoid process.

When Leigh introduces us to the reason for titling her novel the way she did, I can see where she's going, and it’s admirable, but she fails to convince me that she's chosen the right title or knows how to play this piece. I see no respect accorded to the careers which are assigned to either actor in this drama. I found that very sad; it had me distracted from the story because I was wondering why someone would make their main characters a fashion designer and a musician if they're not then going to go somewhere with it - especially in a novel which supposedly has music at its core.

On that score, I'm not sure that 'prelude' is a proper fit, either. It seemed to me that what Leigh was really looking for was more along the lines of an overture; however, given that both parties had been in relationships before, perhaps prelude - the beginning of a new movement - is better than overture, which to me signifies the start of something brand new. The two are probably interchangeable at least to some degree, but this relationship was supposed to be the start of something brand new, yet neither party to it seemed to be making any original overtures.

I was intrigued by how Leigh introduced the music motif, but disappointed that it then goes nowhere, since it was the only thing which was holding my attention! The main characters are far too one-dimensional to inspire loyalty and too predictable to generate any interest. The setting was no better. I was not at all moved by this story supposedly taking place in Milan, because I felt none of the atmosphere of that city. Everyone in the story acts exactly like they're American, with American speech patterns and even their thought processes are as American as you can get.

Not only is there nothing to make us believe we're in Milan, there isn't anything to make us believe Angelo was ever in Austin, Texas, either. Take this example: "A road that ran along the swamp lands." In Austin, Texas? Texas which is in a three-year drought? Texas which had its driest year ever in 2011? What swamp? Does Leigh not understand that there's a difference between Texas and Louisiana? Or does she think Austin is on the coast with a salt marsh next door? That was suspension of disbelief out the door again.

Why was I uninspired by the two protagonists? We have Angelo, who is supposedly a fashion prodigy at 23. That I could just about buy, but even if I swallowed that unquestioningly, what does Leigh offer me in return, to validate my trust in her? Nothing! I'm sorry, but I can't buy that a fashion meteor like Angelo goes through life thinking of nothing - quite literally nothing whatsoever - save how hot Dostov is. She goes through the entire novel and never honestly contemplates fashion. She never dwells on her work, or ruminates other than briefly in passing on her ideas for designs. She never becomes engrossed in what needs to be done to get her opera project where it needs to be. There is no fashion in her head and that makes this character a complete fraud for me. Romy and Michele were more convincing as fashion designers than Angelo is.

Yeah, we get one evening where she sits and roughs out some sketches of things she wants to make, but that's it, and it's over far too quickly. We get to share none of her thought processes during this time: there's nothing about how she's viewing what she does, nothing about how she gets an idea and translates it onto the page; nothing about how she can see fabric giving a three-dimensional life to her drawings, nothing about the fit, flow and feel of the material. Remember this is told from her first person PoV (alternating with Dostov's), yet we almost never find a fashionable thought drifting anywhere in her mind! The young-Earth creationists have more intelligent design than she does, and I can't buy that she would be even remotely like that were she a real person - not even were she hopelessly in love as well. It's a betrayal of her entire life's choices to depict her this way.

Even Dostov agrees that Erin Angelo is simply uninteresting and has nothing to offer. I know this because when we get into his mind all he has going on is lust for her body. All he wants is her "boobs" under his hands, and honestly, given the way this story is told, who can blame him when she evidently has nothing else on display? We're reminded ad nauseam that he's a maestro, yet never once does a real musical thought enter his brain. He never thinks about his opera. He never thinks about the musical direction in which he's taking it. He never thinks about any piece of music he would compose or play. He never relates music to what's happening in the real world, or sees music in the everyday events of the real world. Not once. Not ever. And he's a "maestro", so we're expected to believe. Well I don't believe it; I've been offered no reason to do so, unless you count him raising and waving his baton all over the place. And yes, do rest assured that he's tapped a few podia with it. His name ought to be Do-stiff, not Dostov.

An example of how inappropriate he is to his position is clarified starkly when he asks Erin to perform in the opera in an important solo role. This made me laugh out loud because it was so brain-dead. Some maestro. An important opera is opening and some untried, untested girl off the street with zero training is thought appropriate? We can tell what an aria-head Dostov is by the fact that his narration runs like this: "I only make it as far as the door to my Aston Martin...". Since we already know the make of car he owns, was there something wrong with merely saying "the door to my car", or are we intended to understand that the nipple-devouring Dostov is a pretentious parvenu?

The entire novel shows that this pair of one-note people don't know the score, let alone how to write or sing along with one. Their entire repertoire consists of nothing more than lusting after the other. Now I can buy that someone is hot, and would be strongly in your thoughts, but for that to be the sole subject of pretty much their entire mental process is patent nonsense. If there are truly people like that, they need competent medical attention rather urgently, and if they fail to get that, then they need law enforcement attention even more urgently before someone gets hurt.

I looked forward to reading this and would have liked to have loved it (or even loved to liked it), but I could not. This novel was not about real people with real careers, hopes, and dreams. It was merely a story of how two sets of repressed genitals got their rocks off. This novel ought to have been titled Tragédie en Musique but that one is already taken, so might I suggest Catastrophe de Mode played at tempo di licenziosità?

Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally

Title: Catching Jordan
Author: Miranda Kenneally
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Rating: worthy

Don't confuse this novel with Crossing Jordan or with Jordan's Catch!

I've been aware of this novel for a while and shied away from reading it because it's similar in some regards to my own Seasoning. So what made me take the plunge? Well I was kicked into dealing with it by the news story of Maddy Paige's appalling treatment by the delusional and clueless so-called Strong Rock Christian School. It needs to be renamed "Rocks in the Head Christian School" or "Strong Discrimination Christian School". Things desperately need to change, and reviewing this novel and others like it down the road is one albeit tiny way to get the feeling out there that gender is irrelevant to everything except procreation, and amongst some species, not even then! Since my own Seasoning novel is already published and was originally written some years ago, no one can accuse me of ripping off someone else's work!

Having completed Catching Jordan, I can say that the two novels are indeed very different. Seasoning isn't about romance or getting into college, it's about the game and about genderism, and it's about growing up, not about wallowing blindly in some adolescent fiction; it's about leading and taking charge, and it's about overcoming paralyzing fear. This isn't a comment on Catching Jordan, but it is a comment on bad YA fiction. Seasoning was never aimed at the young adult market although I'm working (on and off, mostly off!) on a partially illustrated version which will be aimed precisely at that market.

Before we get started on the review let me comment in detail on the Maddy Paige insanity. I noticed while reading the limited news items about it, that the Atlanta Phoenix is supporting Maddy, but it seems a bit sad to me that a team which is segregated from "men's" sports is supporting a woman who wants precisely the opposite: a fully-integrated team!

Maddy's case is clearly religiously motivated. This world is always sadder when religion ceases to be personal and becomes a power-play once more, but this goes beyond just religion: it's also an ingrained societal imperative, as was shown by Constanta.com's article about it, where Veronica Griffin of all people labeled Atlanta Phoenix as a "Women's Professional Football team", not simply as a "Professional Football team".

The bottom line is that if a person is good enough, that's all there is; gender (or anything else for that matter) is irrelevant. It's time to stop seeing this as inviolably delineated "men's" and "women's" and start seeing it as "people's". What, exactly, does Strong Rock's Phil Roberts mean when he talks about "girl sports" and "boy sports"? Do sports have gender now‽ Seriously? If history teaches us anything, it's that segregation has never been the answer. We're in a position where even the military is fully integrating women, so why are we deliberately segregating half of our population in sports?

If Phil Roberts was scared that "...boys were going to start lusting after her...", then what he needed to address is the abject failure of his (evidently not) Strong Rock Christian school to inculcate children in appropriate values and behaviors instead of punishing a 12-year-old girl for his school's sorry failure. Or does he want us to believe that a good Christian education necessarily turns out lustful boys? Maybe it's a case of strongly sucks, not strongly rocks?

If it's true that women cooperate better than men as some studies suggest, then including women on the team (not "the boys team", just "the team") is not only a just thing to do, it's a demonstrably smart thing to do!

So let's review! I have to say that I was turned off this novel rather quickly (by p15!) when Tyler Green ("Ty" of course) saunters onto the stage, and Jordan Woods turns almost literally to Jell-O™. Now this is the tough captain of her team, used to being in charge, used to playing rough, used to focusing, surrounded by hunks every day, getting down and dirty with them, and not a whisper of an overt attraction, but her legs literally go rubbery when Ty shows up. I'm sorry but that made me nauseous. Keneally betrayed Jordan right there and then. I found myself seriously hoping this novel was better than this, but I had little faith that it was over the next thirty pages that I read.

Jordan Woods (cool last name!) is the captain of her high school football team. She's also the quarterback. This parallels my own Janine Majeski character who is the captain of her factory soccer team and also the lead striker, and that's pretty much where the parallel ends. Jordan's dad is a major league football player (who predictably isn't supportive of her, but he is supportive of her bother, who plays college football). Her mother, predictably, is supportive, but has some weird ideas about how her daughter needs to represent herself to guys. Her idea of selling herself is to completely sell out.

When Ty, the predictable new kid in town, appears at practice hoping for a place on the team, Jordan is so predictably distracted in practicing a new snap that one of her own team, playing opposition, sacks her. For those not familiar with American football, the term 'sacking the quarterback' doesn't mean firing her, it means tackling. Why it has to be described in such dramatic terms is a mystery. Rome was sacked, a quarterback is simply knocked over - like a liquor store. Americans are probably the only nation on the planet who think along Muslim lines, but not about god: about their own nation! Whereas the Muslims assert in the Shahada that "there is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the messenger of God," Americans assert however unconsciously, there is no nation but the USA; capitalism is its profit.

So while to the rest of the world, 'football' means two teams of eleven kicking a ball around a pitch, trying to get it into opposing nets, America begs to differ. No, not even begs: demands! Contrary to real football where the hand isn't allowed to touch the ball unless you're a goalkeeper or you're throwing the ball back in after it goes out over the side line (and there are strict rules covering all that), in (American) football the foot never touches the ball! Well, yeah, there's a rare instance or two, such as kick off, for example, but this is really not football. It's Carryball or Throwball. Tarryball? Crowball?!

Anyway Jordan is fine: she's a tough player, but all of this is about to go as far south as the South Auckland Saints courtesy of super-hunk Ty. Suddenly Jordan, hitherto the consummate player, cannot think of anything else but Ty and his hunky body. Indeed, her whole life quits orbiting planet football and starts circling the drain of sinkhole Ty. I'm sorry, but I don't buy this given what we've been told about Jordan. Yes, I would buy that she's strongly attracted to a guy, but not like it's described here, and not to the virtual abandonment of everything else. That's not the Jordan I was introduced to in the first fifteen pages. I don't know why Kenneally betrays and abandons that Jordan, disrespecting her and morphing her from a worthy, even remarkable female protagonist into nothing more than a gland warmer.

Over the next thirty pages or so we reach the point where Jordan isn't sleeping because she can't stop thinking of Ty, and where she's spending hours doing her hair, shaving her legs, and picking out a wardrobe. One thought she has is "I hope Ty likes shea butter," although whether she imagines him eating her or simply fondling her skin isn't detailed. And yeah, I hope that did disgust you because it disgusted me to read what Keneally was writing here. But Keneally thinks it's okay to write this stuff as long as she has Jordan agree that "Yeah, I know. I make myself sick, too."! She tops all this with a lacy underwear set which barely covers her (and which her own mother bought for her), and incorporates a push-up bra underneath an unusually (for her) low-cut T-shirt.

What bothers me about this is that there seems to be a mindset here that Ty is somehow going to intuit exactly what Jordan is wearing and react favorably, even predictably to it! I really don't care if she falls for a guy or sleeps with him if she's thought it though some. That's her business. It's also her business what she wears, but for her to react like this when she's met Ty just once, hardly spoken to him, and doesn't know squat about him is a disgrace. Is she planning on flying into bed with him when she knows nothing about him, his habits, his attitude towards women, or most importantly, his sexual history? Remember this is a girl who, we're told, has been playing school football for many years. She's not thirteen, she's seventeen. She supposed to be on the cusp of adulthood. She's the best there is at what she does in her state. She didn't get there by failing to plan, failing to anticipate, failing to look ahead and to consider all the options, or by acting like she's brain-dead. Yet all of that training, which is ingrained if we're to believe what Kenneally has told us in the first fifteen pages, runs completely off the clock!

Keneally's genderism exposed in this novel is another disgrace, as is her appalling deprecation of "math nerds". She puts this bigotry into Jordan's mind, but that only makes it worse: if Jordan is in a position where discrimination and bigotry come into play, then where does she get off employing that same attitude towards others? This just makes Jordan look like a hypocrite or a privileged brat. Those are not qualities which will endear her to me. To her credit, Keneally does try to claw some of this back later in the novel, but whether she does enough is up to you to decide.

If some clueless guy had written this novel it wouldn't be any less excusable, but it would be more understandable. For this to come from a female writer is disturbing at best. Keneally's attitude towards Jordan's fellow football players is pretty much that they're all closet rapists. And what's with them all calling her 'Woods'? It seems all the girls and virtually none of the guys get to be called by their first name. That just struck me as weird. The two main protagonists are the exceptions to this. There is another, the third element of the almost inevitable triangle, but both his first and last names sound like first names so it doesn't really make an impact!

Jordan's attitude towards the cheerleaders is that they're all essentially ignorant, rude, cruel, and air-headed bimbos who neither know nor care about football, only about the hunks who play it. I don't doubt for a minute that there are cheerleaders like that, and high school football players like she describes and implies, but to categorize all of them in one way is bigoted nonsense. It's no better than saying something as idiotic as "all black people are drug addicts", or "gays are pedophiles". I was dearly hoping at this point that this novel improved, but I wasn't optimistic, especially when I discovered that Keneally is yet another writer who thinks in terms of 'bicep' and not 'biceps'!

Jordan gets screwed over by her coach in the first game of the season when he dumps her after the first half and puts Ty in, in her place. This is the game which has scouts from the University of Alabama watching; then Alabama seems to want her as a college player, but makes her pose in make-up and a demeaning outfit for their calendar. I have to wonder if anyone from the UoA has seen this novel and how they feel about Keneally describing their picture-taking as she does. I just Googled pictures for UoA and women's sports and saw nothing even remotely like Keneally describes! Is this a personal vendetta against Alabama?

On the emotional front, Jordan really starts screwing things up. For a seventeen-year-old she acts like a ten year old. For a team captain she's clueless in how to apply what she supposedly knows there to other parts of her life. She does precisely what we expected, and starts dating Ty, and then she discovers how utterly clueless she's been with Sam, who she's known for a decade and who is in love with her. She rides roughshod over his feelings and while she's telling him that she wants everything to remain the same between them (but really, he's not good enough for her). While she's doing this, she ignores message after message from Ty. When he finally comes over in tears through worry about her whereabouts and welfare (and yes, he does overdo it on the "I need to know where you are" power-play, but he lost his parents to a car accident and didn't know where they were, either). Jordan rightly tells him off about that, but this is after she basically told Sam how things were going to be! In short, she treats both guys like dirt.

At that point, I didn't like Jordan any more, and since this was the only character in this entire novel who had offered any hope of holding my interest, I was disappointed to say the least. The opening few pages were all about sports, but sports was quickly ditched with the arrival of Ty, and that was a mistake; the novel took a turn for the worst with that, but by the time my doubts were maximizing, I had only a hundred or so pages left to go, so I pressed on, and Keneally actually did struggle to pull this out of the fire. It's for that reason alone that I'm rating it as a cautious 'worthy'. The writing - technically speaking - isn't bad, but the events and conversation are rather tedious at times, stuck in a groove. However since I have to operate under the assumption that what might seem less than ideal to me could seem reasonable to someone who is actually the same age as Jordan. I would hope that such people have a bit more going for them and be looking out for something stronger than this, but maybe this will do for now.

Lingerie Wars by Janet Elizabeth Henderson

Title: Lingerie Wars
Author: Janet Elizabeth Henderson
Publisher: Unknown
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!

This novel appears to be the first in an Invertary series. Whether any of the others will be an improvement on this I don't intend to find out.

The English and the Scots have long been antagonistic. In the past, these disagreements were fought out on the battlefield, but that stopped when Elizabeth 1st died without leaving an heir. She herself picked James 6th of Scotland to succeed her. He had been the longest reigning monarch ever to rule Scotland, but when he became James 1st of England, he set about combining the two nations into one (along with Ireland), and setting up a single parliament to govern them. The flourishing of English society which had taken place under Elizabeth continued during his reign. Bacon, Donne, Jonson (Don Johnson lol!), Marlowe, and Shakespeare lived in his era, and it is his name which became attached to the Authorised King James Version of the Bible.

These days, those battles are fought on the football field, and each year the four nations which comprise Great Britain: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales represent in a week-long battle for soccer supremacy in the quaintly titled 'Home Internationals'. Though a single nation, the UK is allowed four teams because it was the birthplace of football. I remember one interview on TV with the then manager of Scotland where he referred to the upcoming match between these two nations as taking on the "Anglish" - not playing against England, the team, but against the nation! I found that amusing. So these games have deep roots that go beyond mere football. I love Scotland: it was featured powerfully in my novel Saurus, so when I saw this novel pop up on Netgalley, I couldn't resist it, even though romances like this aren't exactly my cup of tea, especially after the very disappointing Skinny Bitch in Love.

The male protagonist is a retired British soldier, with the asinine name of Lake Benson (can we not ever have a romance without these bizarre pretentious names?!). His sister, believe it or not, is called Rainne! Rain feeds lakes, so are we to take home from this that Lake's sister is servile? She's certainly portrayed that way. He has loaned her money to open this underwear shop directly across the street from an exotic lingerie shop owned and run by Kirsty. These names remind me of stories I used to read to my kids when they were toddlers, about a blue dog and his rainbow-hued friends. The shops are supposed to be in a little Scots town of Invertary, which is fictional but seems to be based heavily on a real town called Inverary which sits on a Loch-side.

So we immediately know the over-arching plot: Lake and Kirsty are made for each other and will live happily ever afterwards, unless this story truly is different, which I seriously doubt at this time. The only mystery, then, is how well it's written and how entertaining are the contortions through which these two will go before they finally get together. I'm sorry to have to relate that I was sadly let down on that score. David Tennant and Kelly MacDonald have already done this kind of thing in film, which wasn't great but was passable enough to idle away an hour or two, and was a lot better than this novel.

There are unforeseen issues with the shop, 'Betty's Knicker Emporium', one of which is that the contract under which the shop was sold stipulates that 86-year-old Betty still has a say in it - including that the sign stays unchanged. Betty owns the building; Rainne merely leases the shop, so this immediately presents the problem of how much money Lake has sunk into this if it's jsut for rent and stock. It's not like he bought the building. Kirsty comes over to visit with Rainne (someone whom she's been trying to help in getting her business afloat) and gets into a dispute with Lake, which ends up with the two of them declaring all-out war on each other (the lingerie wars of the novel's title). Kirsty, who essentially melted when she saw Lake. The cliché-laden description of this encounter all but made me toss my breakfast all over my keyboard. I was hoping that we could keep that YA nonsense to a minimum and actually enjoy a fun story here, but that hope was quickly dashed to death on this rocky romance.

While Kirsty is rather discombobulated by this turn of events, Lake finds himself excited by the prospect of planning a battle. He gets a dose of reality, however, when 86-year-old Betty shows up and lets herself in, offering him a hot meat pie for breakfast, and demanding he toss the coffee he's made and make her some tea. I confess I did love Betty and the conversations they had. Lake's assessment of Betty is: "In another life she would have made a leader of a great terrorist cell. Or a dictator of a small country." This is the kind of story I was hoping for. Unfortunately, it's not what was delivered. I really liked the opening few paragraphs of chapter 2; the interaction between Lake and Kirsty there was really enjoyable, as was his relationship with Betty. Even Rainne comes out of her shell a bit, but this is yet another romance (and indeed there seems to be no discernible difference here between adult fiction and young-adult fiction) which goes the way of the woman turning into a limp rag and the over-confident male smugly dictating her every breath.

The battle lines are slowly being drawn, with a newspaper article back-firing on Kirsty, and Lake finding out that she was once a model of the same hue as those of Victoria's Secret, until her then boyfriend crashed a car in which they were driving, and while he walked away (taking a chunk of her money with him), tragedy walked all over Kirsty's body, sending her into PTSD, as well as marking her with some serious physical scarring. I found it a bit weird that I was reading this (Lingerie Wars), interleaved with reading Blind Date which also features a female protagonist with body scars. Were I superstitious, I'd be in danger of becoming creeped-out by these coincidences between my current ebook and my current hardback! But it's just a meaningless coincidence.

So, I was toodling along with this story, enjoying it sporadically in fact, despite some significant potholes in the interaction between the two main protagonists. I was even willing to put up with some sabotage of Lake's store which was conducted not by Kirsty, but on her behalf. No one was hurt and it was done rather in fun (if somewhat mean fun), but my enjoyment of the novel came to a screeching halt when Lake began manhandling Kirsty and then breaking into Kirsty's home and snooping around one night when she was sleeping upstairs. He snooped her financial information on her laptop, had someone hack into her website and advertise his own store on it, and then he ogled her while she was fast asleep in her bed.

I'm sorry but no.

What is this - a clueless, trope infested, young adult novel? It wasn't supposed to be, but it's indistiguishable from one. This was entirely unacceptable to me, and I found it offensive that the Kirsty character is such a dishrag, not only permitting, but even falling in with Lake's manipulation of her even as she mumbles feeble protestations. What the hell kind of a woman is she? Well to begin with, she's one who has lost all my respect. Clearly, she's not any kind of a woman; rather, she's just a toy for this guy: a living, life-size sex doll for the adolescent soldier-boy. If you don't find that offensive, not in the least, then I'm sorry, but there's something wrong with you.

If this were a spy novel, then yes, I'd half expect some breaking and entering, and snooping. If it were a stalker novel, or a thriller, or a horror story, or a story about a psycho killer, then yes, it would be "appropriate" to the tale to have this happen. Even if this were a comédie noire, this might be "acceptable" - for example, a pair of spies who were entering into a relationship both snooping on each other and breaking into each other's apartments. It would fit the fable in those instances, but for a light romantic comedy? No. You lose the light right there and instead starkly illuminate a host of problems with this kind of fiction, whereby women are portrayed as having no value other than as man-toys. How is the way Kirsty is represented here different from how, for example, women are portrayed in porn movies: as having nothing on their mind other than idly waiting for some guy who is just like Lake to denude them and 'do' them? Let me answer that: it isn’t. There is no difference, and I find both equally offensive.

How can it be viewed in any other light: to have a guy manhandling and manipulating a woman who is in financial straits and who is scarred both physically and mentally, and for the female protagonist to accept this as fine amnd have no protection from this sick bullying lech? No. There is no way I am going to accept this as a comedy or a cute roamnce, and Henderson should be thoroughly ashamed of herself for even thinking this up for such a genre, let alone committing it to an actual novel. If she were going somewhere useful, or interesting with that line of plotting, that might be a different story, and I admit I'm judging this having read only 30% of it, but in those sixty-some pages, I've seen no hint whatsoever that she plans on heading anywhere other than Lake clubbing Kirsty over the head, and dragging her back to his cave.

Has Henderson neither read nor seen anything of the military scandals whereby women in the military are abused and raped by men like Lake Benson, and who are denied justice because they’re women? Not that there can be any real justice for such appalling abuse, but you know what I mean. I wonder how she feels about perpetuating the lie that it’s just fine for military men to take what they want, because it’s really what women want too, isn’t it? (So she'd have us believe, if judged by this novel).

I sat and thought about whether I really wanted to read any more of this trash - about whether the remaining 70% could make up for the first thirty, and I'm sorry but I can’t find it in me to read any more. Henderson has in these first few pages, robbed me of any faith I might have held in her ability to take this anywhere, at this point, where it could possibly shed the sewer stench with which she's now so irremediably imbued it. 'Warty' hardly describes a canker like this. Remind me never again to make the sad mistake of imagining that a story with a saucily playful title like Lingerie Wars could go anywhere other than where Henderson has let it sink.

Skinny Bitch in Love by Kim Barnouin

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.