I downloaded this because of the New York Times article claiming that this erotic novel "electrified women across the country." I just had to see what
I downloaded this because of the New York Times article claiming that this erotic novel "electrified women across the country." I just had to see what all the buzz was about. Erotic thriller? Hey, bring it on.
Sigh.
This is the best you can do? Seriously?
This book reads like the sexual fantasy of a virgin Twilight fan... oh wait, it IS the sexual fantasy of a virgin Twilight fan. Gotcha. That explains the crappy writing, the lack of character development, the slow as sludge plot, and the dullest sex in print. If this book is truly "relighting a fire under a lot of marriages" in America, I'm even more worried for the sate of our fair nation.
Jesus Christ.
Look. Real women read The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. Or we find the good stuff in Ken Follett and pretend we read it for the plot. Or we go for old reliable: the bodice-ripper. But at least we know where to go for something we can friggin use.
****Update: 25/3/2012: The massive thread that follows just totally reaffirms every point I made in the review. All of this from a writer whose work a****Update: 25/3/2012: The massive thread that follows just totally reaffirms every point I made in the review. All of this from a writer whose work appears in the New York Times? Nice. Enjoy.****
****Update: 21/3/2012: I need to give credit where credit is due. For an eloquent and informative review (NOT AUTHORED BY ME) of Brave Girl Eating that, unlike my review, places facts over rage, please see http://www.amazon.com/review/R1F9BQBA...
For scathing snark and wrath, my review is below.****
***Sigh. Let's do this. Oh, and Harriet Brown, I hope you read this. I really, really do. Though I doubt it would do you any good.*** (Update: she has read it, contacted me and unleashed her fans on me. I was right: it didn't do any good.)
Brave Girls Eating is Harriet Brown's memoir about her experiences with her daughter's anorexia.
This book gave me nightmares: I literally had dreams that I was in a therapy session with Harriet Brown, screaming at her while she laughed and smiled away. The positive reviews of this book on goodreads have left me absolutely dumbfounded.
Here's the deal.
Decades of psychological studies done on anorexia paint a picture of family dysfunction that brings about the disorder. More or less, the typical story goes like this: one parent -- usually the mother -- is overbearing, controlling, suffocating, lacks boundaries, is the center of the family's attention, and is totally entrenched in denial about any problems existing within herself or her family. (Narcissistic Personality Disorder, anyone?) Right around the time of puberty, when the normal progression is for the child to separate from the parents and form an identity of her own, the child enters into crisis. She wants to become her own person but has no idea who she is because she's never been allowed to be herself: she's been who others (i.e., mom) want her to be. She has NO identity.
Additional family dysfunction only enhances the child's difficulties. The family dysfunction likely never created a problem before because the child was, well, still a child. It's when the kids start to grow up, see that something is wrong in the family, and are unable to articulate it, that anorexia comes about. Hey, some kids do drugs. Some smoke. Some go the other way and excel at sports. Whatever. But most kids in this kind of situation end up with an eating disorder because food is the only thing in their lives that they can control. (For example, mom may make herself the center of attention when her daughter takes first place at a gymnastics meet...but mom can't make her daughter put an apple in her mouth, chew it, and swallow it.) Like a toddler who cries because he can't express himself, the anorexic starves because she can't articulate her feelings.
The problem?
Well, among others things, when parents finally figure out that their kid is sick, it's too late. The child has adopted a coping mechanism that she can't shake despite the fact that it's making her miserable. Why can't she shake it? Well, starving (and the mental torture one must inflict upon oneself to continue starving) make a person half crazy. Even better? The fact that she's never been allowed to have an identity? Well, guess what the anorexia has become? It becomes her identity. Then the sufferer is so mentally screwed up from the starving/anorexia-thinking that she's even more at a loss to understand why she does this to herself, what drove her to do it in the first place, and why she can't stop.
Enter Harriet Brown, whom I suspect is one of those above-mentioned overbearing narcissistic mothers. That's just my guess, given that only an extremely narcissistic and controlling mother would take the one thing that her daughter clings for an identity (the anorexia) and make it her own. And publish a book about it. And make that book all about herself. And see nothing wrong with that fact.
A little reading between the lines in this book tells you a lot about Harriet Brown. You see, from the beginning, she tells us that anorexia "chose" her daughter and not vice versa. Harriet also says that while her family had a little dysfunction, it was nothing out of the ordinary. No. Not her family. She insists they simply don't fit the anorexic family profile. (Translation: Harriet is blameless.) Yet Harriet leaves us so very many clues to the contrary that she renders own her claims laughable.
1) The book's title alone should tell you that mom's got a penchant for drama. If that's not enough to convince you, consider some of the following gems: Every time her daughter eats it's like she's "jumping from thirty-thousand feet. Without a parachute" ; "If I'd had a gun in my hand, I swear I would have pulled the trigger" ; "Every day was fraught now, strewn with mine fields and tears." Yikes. If that's just the drama on the page, imagine what it's like to live in a house with and be the daughter of this woman.
2) Here's a little hint as to what kind of mom we're dealing with. To illustrate the anorexic's typical family dynamic, Harriet gives us an example of a girl who told her mother that she wanted to be a flight attendant when she grew up and mom replied, "that's not good enough." (Shock, the daughter developed anorexia, probably after a lifetime of dealing with such *loving* encouragement.) Instead of noticing the meanness in the mother's statement, Harriet writes, "I wonder if there's a mother anywhere in America who has actively supported every single one of her daughter's choices." (ARGHGHGHGH!!!!)
3) Some other hints that something's up with this mom and her kids? --Her daughter's first anxiety attack/anorexic meltdown happens on Mother's Day. Symbolic much? --The girl is in her teens and still calls Harriet "mommy." --The sick daughter would "rather be with her family than her friends" on Halloween. Huh?? She's a TEENAGER who chooses family over friends? Hello, red flag. --The very pseudonym that Harriet gives her daughter in the book infantilizes the girl even more: "Kitty." Like a pet. Like a baby. --Oh, and Harriet is quick to tell us that when it came to writing the book, her daughter "overcame her own preference for privacy out of a wish to help others." Sure she did. She "overcame" what she valued and wanted so that she could give mama Harriet what she wanted. And the brilliance? Harriet has herself (and probably the kid, too) convinced that it's what the daughter wants. Narcissism at its finest. Fuck me. --On that note, it took me all of 3 minutes to find "Kitty's" true identity with Google. If Harriet really did care about concealing her daughter's identity, wouldn't she have done a little more to hide her than simply changing the name? It almost makes me think Harriet enjoys the attention. Shocking.
4) Apparently, a lot of other people noticed her daughter's anorexia long before Harriet did. One friend tells her as much. Instead of using this moment to do a little reflection and self-evaluation as to why she, as the mother, never saw it happening, Harriet's reaction is, "I feel like slapping her. No, punching her in the mouth. No, garroting her." (Jesus H. Christ.)
5) Harriet is sure her family is not the cause of the anorexia, despite the fact that nurses write "mother in denial" on her daughter's charts. Harriet is sure that it's not the family despite the five plus decades of research on the disease that basically says, "If your kid is anorexic, you fucked up." (Yes, the research, the case studies, the psychologists, and everyone else -- they're wrong, wrong, wrong.) She's sure it's not the family despite the fact that her other daughter screams "It's your fault my sister is anorexic!" before tearing down the street screaming at the top of her lungs that her parents are horrible.
Well. PHEW. Now that Harriet has shown us that the cause of her daughter's illness is not because she's a narcissistic "take-all-the-credit-and-none-of-the-blame" mom, Harriet can adopt the radical new "Family-Based Treatment." In FBT, the parents take complete charge of all of the child's meals ... because that's just what an anorexic needs: more control from mom. What a wonderful way to go against the stacks of research that say "it's not about the food," and, well, make it about the food.
FBT is great for Harriet because, according to developers of the method, there's "no need to know [the cause of anorexia] in order to treat the illness." Oh! Perfect! So her daughter never needs to learn why she's sick, what triggers her anorexia, and what changes to make in her life in order to sustain her recovery! YAY! That pesky "why?" that plagues all anorexics can just be swept under the carpet! It'll all be fine as long as she just eats! HOORAY!
Wow. That sounds a lot like not vaccinating your child, treating the onslaught of illnesses that follow with sugar pills, and all the while wondering why your kid keeps getting sick. Heh. Fixing the surface issue instead of repairing the problem at the source. Gee. Great idea.
Are you surprised to hear that her daughter relapsed again and again?
What kills me, absolutely KILLS me, is that the daughter repeatedly asked to go to inpatient therapy and the parents continuously refused. God forbid they relinquish control and let their daughter develop the skills necessary for recovery. Could it be that they're afraid of what will surface if the daughter were to go and learn for herself just why she's sick?
And why is she sick? That doesn't matter, according to Harriet, but our author gives us a little clue anyway: "I don't think I'm one of those mothers who believes she's close with her child when actually the child loathes her." (PSSSSST. Harriet. Think again. You just nailed it.)
300-some pages of infuriating, self-serving denial. My heart really goes out to Harriet's daughter.
Room has been called "remarkable," and "sensational." It was not only shortlisted for the Booker Prize, but it was also chosen as a Favorite Book of 2Room has been called "remarkable," and "sensational." It was not only shortlisted for the Booker Prize, but it was also chosen as a Favorite Book of 2010 by our fair goodreads community, proving once again that heads are up asses in of literary critics and readers everywhere.
How this book is anything but blither is beyond me.
The reality is that the plot for this book was ripped from the headlines, based on the stories of Jaycee Dugard, Natascha Kampusch, and the Fritzl family. Emma Donoghue was given a $2 million advance to write Room. With cash in hand and only a plot outline, clearly no one gave a shit if the final work were good or not. What a better way to save face than to tout a piece of crap book you actually paid someone to write as a "gem." UGH. In the end, all we have is yet another author exploiting and getting rich off of the real life tragedies of others. I suppose I wouldn't mind so much -- hey, I may even cheer it on -- if it were done well. In this case, it was done horribly.
You see, if you truly do want to hear the blabbering of a 5 year-old for 300 pages, then you immediately need to change careers and become a kindergarten teacher. Look. It takes talent to write in the voice of a child, which is precisely why so few authors are successful at it. When a good author writes from a child's perspective, the book becomes a classic. Think about it. J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, Roald Dahl, and James Joyce. As for the rest of them? The child narrator is nothing more than a laughable gimmick.
Emma Donoghue falls flat on her face -- and drags us down with her -- for an entire novel with that very gimmick. I don't have patience for "silly penis is always standing up in the morning. I push him down," nor "penis floats," and especially not "my poo is hard to push out." I don't care for rambling recounts of Dylan the Digger and Dora the Explorer, either. Further, I found it odd that a child who is remarkably well-versed in the narrative would have such huge inconsistencies in his spoken English, many times sounding like a 3 year-old while at other times having perfect grammar. Huh? Finally, I got rather annoyed by Capitalizing Nouns and Other Objects in the Room, I found it Distracting and Annoying, and to me it screams Piss Poor Writer. Don't forget to throw in some of Donoghue's own politics for fun: our 5 year-old is still breastfeeding and he loves to tell us which boob produces the creamiest milk. Don't be disgusted. After all, it's natural! And let's not forget the most blatant and frankly, lame, self-insertion by an author into her own novel: Noreen is a kind and clever nurse who hails from merry ol' Ireland, just like our author. BARF.
Forgive me for not passionately hating this book more. Quite simply, it bored the hell out of me. I spent half the time wishing someone would throw the narrator back in the room so he'd shut the hell up. I spent the other half wanting to slap Donoghue's publishers. Suffice to say....
I'm not trying to claim some false sense of importance by writing this. I'm well aware that this is just goodreads. I doubt that theUPDATE - 2/17/16:
I'm not trying to claim some false sense of importance by writing this. I'm well aware that this is just goodreads. I doubt that the author has read my review (God, I hope not, anyway), and I know that very few people will care about this update.
Still, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't address a few things.
The only review of Even Silence Has an End on goodreads worth your time is this one.
I'm ashamed of my review, and I'll eventually pull it.
But the only thing more cowardly than posting this review in the first place would be to delete it and pretend it never happened.
But I can't just keep crying about it either. It's better to just own it.
So, here goes.
In 2010, I read Even Silence Has an End, but I formed my opinion of Ingrid Betancourt from the books, articles, and interviews I read about her after the fact.
That opinion, rather than my feelings about the book itself, was the driving force behind my review 6 years ago.
Last week, I attended a Q&A hosted by Ingrid Betancourt.
I was excited to meet the person who wrote one of the best books I've ever read. Plus, I had a question I'd wanted to ask her since I first read her memoir all those years ago. And I'd never let go of that conclusion I'd come to 6 years earlier: I figured that Ingrid Betancourt was yet another monster among us--a Franco-Colombian Claire Underwood of sorts.
I was wrong.
I've met all sorts of "celebrated monsters" over the years, from the ultra-famous to everyday nobodies. I know when I'm dealing with a liar, narcissist, or sociopath.
Ingrid Betancourt isn't one of them.
There was no charm, magnetism, poise, or presence about her--no agenda, no performance, no attempt to disarm the crowd. And when I asked her my question (which I immediately regretted doing), I fully expected to be upbraided, or at least met with a dismissive response. Instead, she was gracious enough to spend a significant amount of time trying to answer me.
And what about her answer, anyway? It was revealing. It was imperfect. It was raw and unrehearsed, jagged at times, sometimes rational, other times contradictory--yet it was clearly the truth as she saw it.
In short, everything about her answer was human.
Everything about her was human.
And if everything about her was human, that means that when I wrote this review, I tore down one of us.
Now who's the monster?
Well.
There's nothing quite like your own misdirected cruelty to give you pause, throw you into an existential crisis, make you hate yourself, etc etc.
This review has been here for 6 years for anyone who cared to read it. Allow me to reposition it for the next person who stumbles across it and offer a counterpoint to my former 20-something self who wrote it.
The real narrative goes like this:
--Ingrid Betancourt is the victim. She was kidnapped by terrorists, held captive, and brutalized for 6.5 years. It's wrong to imply that she's responsible for the things that happened to her. Her decision to enter FARC territory could have been for any number of reasons--none of which matter. Nothing changes the fact that she's the victim. She didn't ask for any of it.
--No one, not even the aforementioned monsters who walk among us, deserves to suffer what Betancourt and her fellow captives did.
--The world simply victimized Ingrid Betancourt again. International fame was built around her while she was in captivity, and it was thrust upon her when she was rescued. Disturbingly, all it took for her to fall out of favor was something that most would applaud: she criticized the government. That took the form of angering one Colombian politician and then offending some Colombian judges by seeking compensation for her kidnapping. (The other hostages in captivity with Betancourt also sued the Colombian government--you just didn't hear about it). Oh, and 3 or 4 people wrote books saying she wasn't a very nice person while she was in captivity. To build someone up--especially a woman--only to smack her down for misbehaving? It's predictable, it happens every day, and it's purely abusive. (And I just have to add: I feel so stupid that I didn't see it happening with this one, that I took that tired narrative as truth and swallowed it hook, line, and sinker and made it my own).
--How Betancourt, or anyone else, behaved while in captivity is a stupid thing to debate. It's irrelevant, and probably only made it into print to sell books. Those of us who fell into that trap need to do better, lest we also want to debate the character of Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Holocaust survivors, et. al.
--Despite everything she's endured, Betancourt has never acted like a victim. Surviving 6.5 years of captivity in the jungle is bad-ass in itself. But she didn't stop there and call it good. She went on to pen a memoir so well-written that parts of it border on sublime. She recently released a novel, and she's pursuing a PhD. That's all pretty rockstar if you ask me.
--Faulting her for capitalizing on her fame is ridiculous, especially when her message is one of peace and forgiveness. That she never used her ordeal to push an agenda (like, say, burning down the jungle and firebombing the fuckers that wronged her) is admirable.
It's so easy to be some hyper-critical nobody spouting her suspicions and assumptions on a dumb website like goodreads. It takes a lot more courage to be in the public eye, do cool things with your life, and bear it all with dignity.
Like I said, I don't presume that Ingrid Betancourt has read my review, or would care if she did.
But, just in case: Ingrid, I'm sosorry.
I can't undo the cruelty that has sat on this page for 6 years.
But I can add a few edits to show what I think of it now.
See revisions below.
*****
So, let's talk about this book.
First, a little background about the story: it's the memoir of Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian senator who was running for president of that country when she was kidnapped by FARC guerrillas and held captive for 6 years. She lived through sheer hell, including infighting among her fellow hostages, swarms of biting jungle insects, marches during life-threatening illnesses through the never-ending Amazon, and sitting for months at a time with her neck chained to a tree. In a country where the guerrillas' usual M.O. is to storm the homes of politicians, kidnap and kill them, Betancourt (who knowingly wandered into FARC territory) is lucky to be alive.
Even Silence Has an End is one of the most beautiful books that you will ever read. Much of the memoir reads like poetry: "Freedom--such a precious jewel, one we were prepared to risk our lives for--would lose all its brilliance if it were to be worn in a life of regret," ; "Our words echoed in the air, beneath a heavenly dome that wore the dust of diamonds sprinkled alongside the constellations of our thoughts."
Betancourt also reveals small glimpses of humanity that appeared in her jungle prison hell: the guerrillas dancing and singing with the prisoners, a hand grasped in the darkness at night in sheer terror, and the touching words impulsively spoken when another prisoner is on the brink of death. She will take you beyond the depths of despair to a place without hope, to times when she had given up on life, could no longer eat, and could barely stand up. Betancourt is more than a gifted writer and her words will charm you, seduce you, and likely leave you holding her in great reverence.
And what about Ingrid Betancourt today? She's beautiful. She's charismatic. She's a brilliant, wealthy, multi-lingual icon with killer heels and lots of friends in high places. She's part of the European jet-set and has left two hot husbands in her wake. Let's not forget that she's also a strong woman and an incredible survivor.
I want to believe her, I really do. But before we all get misty-eyed and enamored beyond the point of no return, let's have a look at reality.
Getting kidnapped was the best thing that ever happened to Betancourt's career. It launched her to international stardom, scored her a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, the French love her more than their wine, and America is embracing her. Her book deal landed her millions on three separate continents. Two different films are being made about her ordeal. Further, for a cool $25,000, a couple of first-class airline tickets and hotel accommodations, Betancourt will come and speak at any event. She will justify why she tried to sue the very government that rescued her and explain away just why her fellow hostages (including a former close friend, Clara Rojas, who was kidnapped with her) can't stand her. If you find one Colombian who isn't disgusted with Betancourt, I'll buy you a Coke.
What is most disturbing about Betancourt's account of captivity is the fact that she's the most unreliable narrator since Humbert Humbert. (If you take Betancourt at face value, then you likely also believe that Lolita really was a 12 year-old slut who wanted the old man to give it to her like a bad girl; you can stop reading here.) She seems to suffer from delusions so strong that she actually believes them. Her accounts read like hazy visions conjured up in an alarmingly high fever; even the sexual assault by nameless, faceless captors in the misty green airs of the humid jungle starts to make you wonder...and it gets worse. Betancourt describes heart to heart conversations with her female captors that sound fabricated. She tells of a chance meeting with a nameless peasant, straight out of central casting, who warned Ingrid of visions of grave danger. (Eyeroll). She describes bathing Clara Rojas's newborn; Clara, whom Ingrid has been fighting with for years, then asks Betancourt to be the child's godmother. Right. Sure she did. Especially after Ingrid verbally trashed Clara for the first quarter of the book, snidely inferring that Rojas was sinking into madness. (Clara tells a very different story in her own memoir of captivity.) At best, these things are contrived, at worst, they are blatant lies. I would never put it past a politician to lie, but Betancourt, despite multiple claims to the contrary seems convinced of their veracity. Someone needs to pass the lithium.
When not attacking her fellow hostages on every page, Betancourt slips in unnecessary petty details for an extra sting, such as Rojas leaving the bathroom an "unspeakable mess," or another captive bragging about the cost of his engagement ring. One wonders just why these things needed to be in print, other than the fact that Betancourt is clearly out for blood. Our catty hero redeems herself in other ways, however, by teaching her captors French (suuuuuureee) and protesting until prisoners' chains are removed (uh-huh). Her former companions in captivity are so charmed by her that one wants to sue her for libel, one hates her more than all other humans on earth, and one has said "Let's not make symbols and icons out of women who aren't." The only fans Betancourt has left, besides the myriad of Hollywood actors and international heads of state, are the 3 boyfriends she had while in captivity.
What we have here is a book written by a woman whose personal trauma and highly cultivated public persona are battling it out on the page. The public persona wins, of course.
Read this beautiful book. Enjoy it. Savor it.
Just try not to forget who you're really dealing with....more
Ivana Lowell is a Guinness heiress. That means every time someone cracks open a pint of Guinness, cha-ching, Ivana gets richer. She hobnobs with actorIvana Lowell is a Guinness heiress. That means every time someone cracks open a pint of Guinness, cha-ching, Ivana gets richer. She hobnobs with actors, writers, the very rich, and royalty. Oscar de la Renta made her wedding dress. She got handed a job at Miramax, she has a "condo" (that's Brit-speak for penthouse) in Manhattan, a house in Long Island, a castle in Ireland, another castle that her mother bought from Princess Diana's brother, and she grew up in the USA and the UK. She went to exclusive boarding schools and acting academies until she grew tired of them and ran away. She had a nervous breakdown on the floor of a haberdashery because she couldn't get the appropriate name tags for her school clothes. She hangs out in the most exclusive and the sparsest rehab facilities. She doesn't move in mere social circles, no. Her people are "sets."
Anyway, I'm rambling. Ivana really means to tell us that her life is HARD! Why, she's been an alcoholic and abused drugs and comes from a family rife with dysfunction! She's dated bad dudes, made a fool of herself with booze, and wouldn't you know it, she's just plain unhappy! Stars! They're just like us!
I have about as much sympathy for a rich boozer as I did for Britney Spears when, rolling in her millions, complained about being put on the cover of Rolling Stone when she was just 15. ARHGGHGH!!! Even though Ivana did suffer some real trauma (molestation, death of a sibling, severe burns, paternity issues), guess what? It doesn't separate you, elevate you, or make you any different from the rest of us. It just makes you a lot friggin luckier because you have about a billion more bucks than we do. So, either make it interesting (she doesn't), be a sympathetic subject (she isn't), or make damn sure you're a celebrity (she isn't) before penning out a memoir.
Ivana Lowell can't write for shit, which makes me think her therapist put her up to writing this book and then her powerful friends in New York got it published. She never even tells us any of the details of all those drunken nights, preferring instead to say, I was drunk, it was bad. The the name dropping of royals, Vanderbilts, Freuds, and intellectuals in her "set" then ensues. She sums up her entire story near the very end -- which, if she'd done at the beginning would have saved me a lot of time, eye-rolls, and seven bucks -- by saying she spent her life "drinking, being difficult, marrying an addict, having fights with him, and then divorcing him." The rest is just the simple ramblings of a 40-something poor little rich girl who no one's ever heard of. Sheesh. At least James Frey would have us believe that he had girls snorting coke off his ... never mind, at least there was some action there.
The best part? Ivana never even tells us if she got off the booze! Unfortunately, due to the sheer dullness of this book, I'm inclined to think she's clean. Damn. I'm sure she'd have written a much more interesting tale after a couple of dry martinis.
One star for the touching (and only real thing in the book) description of her mother's passing.
There must be other fools out there like me who were conned into buying this book because they vaguely remember liking The Nanny Diaries.
Look. What mThere must be other fools out there like me who were conned into buying this book because they vaguely remember liking The Nanny Diaries.
Look. What made The Nanny Diaries so great was that authors Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus had both been nannies in New York City. They knew their material, they knew the intricate, scandalous, and absurd details of their uber-rich clients' lives, and they were able to write a mildly amusing best-seller. That SHOULD have been it. End of story right there. But for some reason, someone out there is still letting these chicks write books. Why? WHY? (Now do it like Nancy Kerrigan.) WHYYYYYYYYYY?????
Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus are not teenagers. Nor are they reality TV stars. So why they are writing about teen reality stars is beyond me. And beyond them, clearly. In short, this book reads like being talked AT by an adult's idea of a teenager. Wow. A rambling, senseless, and superficial monologue from an unauthentic sounding teen about reality TV stardom. Sounds like fun, no? From the bad, "I stare into the microwave, waiting for my egg to puff up like a chef's hat," to the downright confusing, "Jase snores like he's gargling furniture," I kept having to re-read entire passages because I was unable to follow the pseudo-adolescent banter. Who knew there would be a book out there that's literally too difficult for me to read because it's written for a level of stupidity that even I can't comprehend?
The most disturbing aspect of this steaming cesspool of vomit on paper is that it's actually marketed to teenagers. Are kids today so truly dumbed down? Aren't they supposed to be forced into submission by reading The Great Gatsby and The Scarlet Letter? Aren't they finding themselves in The Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar? Shouldn't they be busy with their first readings of Shakespeare? If not, and they truly are reading things like The Real Real, I'm scared for the future of the entire planet.
We all bought her first book because of the lovable giant that is Julia Child and the story of Look.
Let's be honest here.
No one likes Julie Powell.
We all bought her first book because of the lovable giant that is Julia Child and the story of a promising culinary project. We had enough of those pleasant distractions to kindly ignore the loudmouth attention-whore Julie Powell, despite the fact that she was running around the background screaming "Look at me! Look at me, damn you!!" (What do you want to bet she was a theater major?)
The problem is, her followup gives us none of the positive and all of the negative from Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: no Julia Child, no ambitious cooking project, and lots more of Julie Powell. Now, ask yourself: would YOU want to read the true story of a fat, ugly, mildly famous chick's crumbling marriage, her unabashed accounts of rough sex with her lover and complete strangers, all held together by the glue that is ... (wait for it) ... the art of butchery? Occasionally spiced up with her weird, dated and nerdy fascination with the 90's serial Buffy The Vampire Slayer? Dotted with her musings about marriage as she tanks a bottle and a half of wine each night? Would you REALLY want to read this?
Yeah, me neither.
That's precisely why this book sucks. Julie forgot us, her meager little audience, and she thinks we actually give a fuck about her life instead of her cooking projects. Here's a hint, Julie: we don't give a shit.
You know what you do after the success of Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen? You write a sequel about world cuisine a là Anthony Bourdain. Or you attempt recreating dishes from imperial menus in the 1500s and let us know how it turns out. Or you get a job at the Food Network and write a book spilling all the dirt on their chefs (does The Barefoot Contessa really have sex with her husband, or does she eat her feelings??; is Emeril gay??; is Giada bulimic??)
But guess what you don't do?
You don't publish autobiographical trash that no one gives a baker's fuck (no pun intended) about. We're your readers, not your girlfriends. Save it for your shrink.
Author Julia Powell is a mix of many people. From page one, when she tells us she sold her own eggs to pay off credit debt, she is much like the dreadAuthor Julia Powell is a mix of many people. From page one, when she tells us she sold her own eggs to pay off credit debt, she is much like the dreaded person seated next to you on a long-haul flight that proceeds to tell you their life story in a matter of minutes. She is also the TMI girl that we all know, whose narrative describes the smell of her burps and piss, bitches incessantly about her job and Republicans, describes smelly cocks, drinks too many cocktails, tells us she sleeps with her face on her husband's ass, says fuck every other word and undoubtedly finds herself witty and funny while being oblivious to the gaping jaws and cringes of those around her. She smacks and insults her loving and patient husband while contemplating cheating on him and living vicariously through her slutty friends, both single and married. (I smell a divorce cooking.)
In short, she is the loud girl we all wish would shut the fuck up.
She also started a year-long cooking/blog project -- an idea given to her and set up by the very husband she treats like garbage -- to cook every recipe from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She proceeds to alter and screw up recipes, partly due to their difficulty, partly due to her bad planning, and mostly due to her own stupidity: i.e., boning a fowl isn't that difficult so stop stressing about it; why don't you try asking the butcher if he can slice the bone marrow for you instead of trying it yourself and making a disgusting mess?; please don't tell us about getting lobster meat out with a tweezer. We are, of course, supposed to laugh at this and find it all funny. Ha. Ha.
As she embarked on this culinary journey, I couldn't help but remember that she'd mentioned having three cats and a python, and being disgusted that this was the environment in which she'd be cooking. But no worries. She will of course tell us about the cat hair in the kitchen and in the food, along with the dead mice for her snake shoved in the same bag as her cooking ingredients. And the vegetables falling on the rotted out kitchen floor, which she naturally picks up and throws into the pot. And the flies in her kitchen. That lead her to find the maggots. In her kitchen. Yummy.
Julie ends up getting lots of media attention, a big blog following, a book/movie deal out of the whole thing. An ignorant reader like myself gains a new appreciation for the complexity of Julia Child's recipes and something like (but not quite) admiration for the author actually going through with cooking every recipe in the book.
This will not go on my "sucked" shelf, as is certainly didn't suck. I give it one star for being very readable and for being a somewhat touching story of how one nobody became somebody all by herself. I simply didn't like her tone. I just couldn't take it.
I hear she has a sequel coming out next month, this time about being a butcher. Would I read it? Absolutely. Not because I want to read about her mutilating dead animals and describing even more bodily functions we don't need to know about. Really, I'm dying to know if she divorces that kind husband who was by her side the whole time. I'm betting she did....more
I'm so sorry that Liz Gilbert lost her partner, and am so grateful to this author for having the courage to share her personaThis review is gone now.
I'm so sorry that Liz Gilbert lost her partner, and am so grateful to this author for having the courage to share her personal journey of searching for and finding her truth, from EPL, Committed, and then though astoundingly brave updates about her life on social media.
So, you know what happens when you take a liberal arts school student and throw him in the mix with the boys at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, a So, you know what happens when you take a liberal arts school student and throw him in the mix with the boys at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, a school where the dorms are segregated and residents have a curfew? Well, gee, whaddaya know, "what boys always do" happens: they sit around and play video games, talk about women and sex, they do their homework and contemplate their futures. Oh, and throw some prayer in, too, because it's a Christian University.
And what a shocker! Not all the students are as straight-laced as the school would have them, while others are complete biggots. Why, in fact, they're a mixed bag, pretty much like you'd get in any other university in America. Oh, and surprise! The science classes teach creationism because it's a religious school, and well, gee, the students who believe in creationism seem to just eat that right up. Yet, there are still some private dissenters. WOW!
This ethnography is so vague that it literally could have been about any social group in any institution in the world. In other words? It's piss poor.
Boring.
Tedious.
Took nothing away from it other than Jerry Falwell was a money-making evil genius.
The brilliance of Child 44 came from two simple and intertwined themes: the nightmare of Stalinist Russia which created an environment of mistruSigh.
The brilliance of Child 44 came from two simple and intertwined themes: the nightmare of Stalinist Russia which created an environment of mistrust and betrayal. In Child 44, a child serial killer is running rampant, there's mystery the of the children at the beginning of the story, and the tyrannical government that turns its own people into traitors. To put it simply, the bad guys were nowhere and everywhere all at once, and you had no idea who was who.
And along came Khrushchev ... and along came The Secret Speech. The bad guys are no longer hidden in back alleyways with trenchoats and big fur hats, they're not former friends turned informants any more. Noooo, now the bad guys are in your face. We now have a boring, totally unbelievable female character who managed to live through some death camps, became the leader of an all-male gang, and seeks revenge (my God what an original plot twist! revenge!) on her former interrogator, the hero from the first novel. I suppose this could work if the book were well-written. It wasn't. I've read cereal boxes with better stories and comic books with better action scenes, and I'm pissed off that I found grammatical mistakes and spelling errors (no shit) in a book I spent the last 3 months waiting eagerly to read. The writing was rushed and some of these scenes I swear were stolen from movies. UGH. Waste of time.
**spoiler alert** Reading this book made me want to gouge my own eyes out with knitting needles. My throat got sore from all of the groaning I did pag**spoiler alert** Reading this book made me want to gouge my own eyes out with knitting needles. My throat got sore from all of the groaning I did page after page. Let me give you some examples of suckiness:
All the non-white characters are described as having cafe au lait skin or mocha skin.
Some of the sloppy writing and editing did turn out to be quite funny, such as when a character remembers visiting her grandmother in Scotland and they "sat by the fire wearing nothing but their socks." Since I assume granny and child don't sit naked save for their socks by the fire, it was good for a shudder and a laugh.
There's a graduate student named (wait for it) DARWIN. Oh GAD! Because she's in grad school. So she's smart. So she should be named Darwin. GAH!!!
The grandmother is a sage old woman with an answer to everything, with excellent life advice, including such gems as "Life is what you make of it." Oh. Really? OMG! I'm enlightened.
Knitting is supposed to be a central theme, but really it's just there as an excuse to call this crappy mixture of boring women's lives a "valid" book.
When one of the guys meets up with another guy for a beer, he says "I think I'm falling in love with my family." And the other guy clinks his beer bottle and says, "Congratulations, you've just become a man." Oh. Yes. Because men talk this way. When they have vaginas and are actually women. GAD!!
The main character is killed off by cancer because, you know, she was such a saintly, good character, so why not kill her to inspire some tears and create some sort of heartwarming feeling in readers? Besides, where was the story going anyway ... if she didn't die the ending would have to have been "and they lived happily ever after."
Yah, bad book, story sucked, it was too long, writing was terrible, and it was obviously published just because the author has worked in publishing for years.
This book would have been a lot better had it been written by someone more capable and less smug. The premise itself is fascinating -- living the biblThis book would have been a lot better had it been written by someone more capable and less smug. The premise itself is fascinating -- living the bible literally -- as are the religious groups that the author decided to interview, including snake handlers, the Amish, right-wing Christians, and Samaritans, to name a few. However, his "whoooa, I'm so secular, wow, look at all these religious people, whooooa" attitude made it nothing more than a half-baked project written under a deadline, sloppily contrasted with the author's own life, and a superficial read. Now you know what happens when you send your kid to a university with a pass/fail system instead of grades: you get passable mediocrity that for some unknown reason, gets celebrated by American audiences.
The thing about with these New York memoirists like this author, along with others like Julie Powell or Elizabeth Gilbert, is that they've been so consumed by New York that they forget that the rest of us, in fact, the majority of the entire fucking planet, are not New Yorkers. They look down on us, think we're less intelligent, and can't even communicate on our non-Gotham level because they're plugged into the matrix that is Manhattan. (And I can say this because when I lived in New York, I smiled down at and patted the heads of all those other silly, non-New Yorkers.) What you end up with are these talentless hacks spinning out shallow books that talk down to the rest of us.
If Jacobs had taken his project even half-seriously and remembered that the majority of his readers are at the very least semi-religious, then dropped his condescending I'm-so-great-and-secular-and-work-at-Esquire-in-Manhattan attitude, his book might have been halfway decent.
**spoiler alert** This book is boring, predictable, and pointless. Maybe the kind of thing that charms the sentimental. It's a series of letters in po**spoiler alert** This book is boring, predictable, and pointless. Maybe the kind of thing that charms the sentimental. It's a series of letters in post WWII England between an author facing writers block and an island community who formed a book club during the German occupation. Eventually we meet the characters (who, oddly, have the same voice as the author in their letters) who come to describe one saintly, cliche, full of b.s. woman who held them all together during the occupation, while she manages to slap an overly-religious type, find the one good, true human Nazi and have his child (yep) and then die tragically simply by being her holier-than-this-earth self.
Two stars for one of two well thought-out paragraphs buried among the 200 something pages.
771 pages. Talking about college. How college is shocking for sheltered girls. How college (shocker) isn't really about academia, but sports, beeSigh.
771 pages. Talking about college. How college is shocking for sheltered girls. How college (shocker) isn't really about academia, but sports, beer, sex, and pretty much everything that the university brochures lie about in order to protect their reputations and continue charging $30,000 a year for an "education." This could be written by ANYONE, and in less than HALF the pages.
When a book is bad, and too long, there is a certain point in reading the same shit over and over when your mind just screams SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!. This happened to me about half way through when I got sick of even the most random characters who appear only once in the story, having their entire family histories mapped out for the reader since the 1800's. Filler? Some sort of psychological explanation of the character? NO. BORING. EDITOR?? WHERE ARE YOU!? CUT THIS SHIT. Also, we don't need every single regional accent spelled out for us. Charlotte is from the South. We don't need to be reminded after the says "get" that she pronounces it "git." We don't need to be told that a dude from Brooklyn says "what do you want?" and then have it rewritten again after the quote as "whaddaya want?". Fuck me. If that wasn't enough, can we stop this shit of "shooting looks that are as if to say...."? He shot her a look as if to say fuck you, she shot him a look as if to say I hate you, etc. UGH.
Granted, this book did get the Bad Sex Award in 2003. But since it doesn't even happen until page 2394875485723847, it's not just BAD, it's boring. How anyone managed to FIND this bad sex without skimming over it or simply falling asleep is completely beyond me. I'm shocked that this didn't get the Bad Book Award of 2003.
If you want a good, engaging, and true-to-life story about a fish out of water in her academic environment, read Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel Prep. Use I am Charlotte Simmons only for expensive toilet paper or to stop a bullet.
**spoiler alert** UPDATE: AUG 26, 2016: This review has been here 8 years, has 18 pages of 854 comments and 764 likes. There's no outrage for you to a**spoiler alert** UPDATE: AUG 26, 2016: This review has been here 8 years, has 18 pages of 854 comments and 764 likes. There's no outrage for you to add in the comments section that hasn't already been addressed. If you want to talk about the book, or why you liked it, or anything else, feel free.
UPDATE: FEB 17, 2014: I wrote this review 4 years ago on a foreign keyboad, so I'm well aware that I spelled Chekhov's name wrong. I'm not going to fix it, so please don't drive my review further up in the rankings by commenting on the misspelling. You're very dear, but I know his name is Anton and not Antonin. On that same note, you don't need to add comments telling me that I didn't like the book because I "don't know how to read" and "don't understand metaphors." I actually have an M.A. in in English Lit, so I do know how to read -- much better than you do, in fact. Now quit bothering me before I go get my PhD and then really turn into a credential-touting ass.
UPDATE: JULY 10, 2013: To all jr. high students who find themselves grossly offended by my review: please remember that every time you leave a comment here, you push my review up even higher in the rankings. Please save us both time and energy by not commenting. Thnx.
This was the biggest piece of garbage I've ever read after The Kite Runner. Just as with The Kite Runner, I'm (somewhat) shocked that this book is a bestseller and has been given awards, chewed up and swallowed by the literary masses and regarded as greatness. Riiiight.
The whole thing can be summed up as the story of a girl who sometimes steals books coming of age during the Holocaust. Throw in the snarky narration by Death (nifty trick except that it doesn't work), a few half-assed drawings of birdies and swastikas, senseless and often laughable prose that sounds like it was pulled from the "poetry" journal of a self-important 15 year-old, and a cast of characters that throughout are like watching cardboard cutouts walking around VERY SLOWLY, and that's the novel.
Here are some humble observations.
First, chances are that you, Mr. Zusak, are not Antonin Chekhov. You are, therefore, incapable of properly describing the weather for use as a literary device, and you end up sounding like an asshole. Don't believe me?
"I like a chocolate-colored sky. Dark, dark chocolate." Really? Do you, now?
"The sky was dripping. Like a tap that a child has tried it’s hardest to turn off but hasn’t quite managed.” Really?? Wow. Next you'll tell me that the rain was like a shower. I'm moved.
"Oh, how the clouds stumbled in and assembled stupidly in the sky. Great obese clouds." Yes. Stupid, obese clouds! They need an education and a healthy diet!
Next, chances are that you, Mr. Zusak, are not William Styron or any one of the other small handful of authors that can get away with Holocaust fiction. They've done their research, had some inkling of writing ability, and were able to tell fascinating stories. You invented a fake town in Germany (probably so you didn't have to do any research) and told a long-winded and poorly-written story, and in 500+ pages you couldn't even make it to 1945, so you sloppily dropped off and wrapped it up in 1943. What's the point of writing historical fiction if you can't even stay within the basic confines of that hisotrical event? For me, this does nothing more than trivialize the mass murder of over 6 million people. Maybe that's why a 30 year-old Australian shouldn't write about the Holocaust. But that's just me. Moving on.
But what really makes this book expensive toilet paper is the bad writing which is to be found not just in bizarre descriptions of the weather, but really on every page. Some personal favorites?
"The breakfast colored sun."
"Somewhere inside her were the souls of words."
"The oldened young man." WTF?!!?
"He crawled to a disfigured figure."
"Her words were motionless."
"It smelled like friendship." (Remind me to sniff my friends next time I see them.)
"A multitude of words and sentences were at her fingertips." (HUH?)
"Pinecones littered the ground like cookies."
Sigh.
All of this is quite funny coming from a book where the main character supposedly learns the importance of words. Further, I love that the protagonist comes to the conclusion that Hitler "would be nothing without words." Really? REALLY? Would Hitler be nothing without WORDS? What about self-loathing, misplaced blame and hatred, an ideology, xenophobia, charisma, an army, and a pride-injured nation willing to listen? Don't those count for something??
The shit-storm comes to an end when a bomb lands on our fictional town, wiping out everyone save for the sometimes book-thief main character. Of course. Because weak writers who don't know how to end their story just kill everyone off for a clean break and some nice emotional manipulation. Written for maximum tear-jerking effect, our main character spews out some great lines when she sees the death and destruction around her:
To her dead mother, "God damn it, you were so beautiful."
To her dead best friend as she shakes him, "Wake up! I love you! Wake up!" (Didn't I see the same thing in that movie My Girl?)
Then she profoundly notes that her dead father "...was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones."
And this kind of angsty adolescent prose just never ended! It went on and on to form the one long-ass, senseless, disjointed story.
But that's ok. Take it all the junk, give it a quirky narrator, an obscure and mysterious title, throw in a Jew on the run from Nazis who likes to draw silly pictures of birds and swastikas, and market it all as Holocaust lit. Ahh, the packaging of bullshit makes for such a sweet best seller.
Swallow it down, America. Put it on the shelf next to The Kite Runner. You love this. You live for this.
The cover of this book promises that you will be "haunted" and "startled," and that the book will even "visit you in your dreams."
Funny, as I read thThe cover of this book promises that you will be "haunted" and "startled," and that the book will even "visit you in your dreams."
Funny, as I read this "scary" novel, I couldn't help but think back to the time I read The Shining ... it was storming outside, it was 3AM and I was too afraid to put the book down, and I didn't care if I would end up wetting the bed because there was no way in hell I was going to get up and go to the bathroom. "Heart Shaped Box" also made me think back to other King novels that had me ready to piss myself with terror: Cujo, Salem's Lot, The Tommyknockers, etc. I even thought back to Red Dragon by Harris, the book that I couldn't read unless my boyfriend was there. When you're traumatized from what you've read, you know you've found a good horror author.
Right up to the last page of Heart Shaped Box, I kept waiting for something scary, and when that didn't happen, I kept thinking that horror should be left to the masters, that the reviews about this book were false advertizing, and that the only true horror writer is Stephen King.
Then I read that the author is King's son? Wow, if I were King I'd be disappointed in my kid.
Man, this thing reads like something an 8th grader wrote for his creative writing class. First of all, the fact that an ageing rock star buys a ghost on the net isn't even a new idea: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6651230/
Given that the story itself isn't even original, what else have we got here? Heh...
It's not scary, it's TOTALLY BORING, it's predictable (oh, let me guess, the depressed ex-stripper/groupie/20-something goth girl who's sleeping with a 50 year-old ex-rock star has a secret about her stepdad ... could it be molestation?? NO! I'M SHOCKED! WHAT A GENIUS PLOT TWIST!), and everything ends all happy, with smiles and rainbows and love and hugs ... and a few Care Bears, I'm sure.
Oh BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! I give it one star ... only for mentioning cool people like Nirvana, Ozzy, and Jackson Browne.
After pondering long and hard, I'm going to try now to articulate just what it was about this book that sucked so much, why it has offended me so greaAfter pondering long and hard, I'm going to try now to articulate just what it was about this book that sucked so much, why it has offended me so greatly, and why its popularity has enraged me even more. This book blew so much that I've been inspired to start my own website of book reviews for non-morons. So let us explore why.
First, let's deal with the writer himself. Hosseini's father worked for Western companies while in Afghasnistan. While daddy (who I am guessing, from Hosseini's tragic account of the "fictional" father, never accepts his son) worked and got wealthy, normal Afghans lived their lives. When war broke out, Hosseini's father was offered a safe position in Iran. Just before the revolution in Iran, his father was offered another job in Paris, before finally taking the family to the USA.
That's fine ... some of us are lucky in life. Others are not. What bothers me, though, is that The Kite Runner is so obviously what Hosseini WISHES had happened.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Hassan character really did exist in some form or another. Surely Hosseini had a friend/sometimes playmate/servant who was left behind while Hosseini's powerful family escaped. Surely, Hosseini feels guilty for leaving his homeland by simple privilege while the less fortunate were left behind to fight the Soviets, the Mujahideen, and then the Taliban. And surely, Hosseini wishes he were some flawed hero that didn't simply get lucky. He wishes he'd majored in English, as the protagonist does, and published fiction books instead of becoming a run-of-the-mill doctor; he wishes his father had depended upon him in the USA as happens in the book, instead of getting by just fine as a rich exile with a daddy-doesn't-love-me complex; he wishes he could go back to Afghanistan, risking his life to make ammends for his shitty and cowardly past, instead of remaining a wealthy outsider living happily in the USA.
Hosseini is simply some guy who feels guilty about having escaped what so many of his fellow countrymen couldn't, and he makes up for it in fantasy in a million ways: accepting his fallen father, marrying an "unsuitable" woman, listening to a voice from the past, saving the son of his friend he watched being raped decades before (when he was too selfish to intervene), stomaching the live stoning of a burka-clad woman and her adulterous lover, taking a beating from an old enemy/Taliban child molestor, giving $2000 to a poor smuggler who tries to feed his kids on $3 a week, and saving a 12 year-old from suicide. If Hosseini REALLY did all this, what a hero he would be. Instead, he just makes it up and calles it a novel ... and people devour this shit with tears, labeling it as "inspirational" and "moving."
What really bothers me? Besides all of the contrived and predictable plot twists?? What really disturbs me is that people not only eat this shit up, but they also call it "literature," award it, and give this guy money and license to write another book.
For lack of better words ... WTF?!!!??! Has everyone just gone STUPID?!!?!?
I could go on about how the writing sucks, especially when the author admits to using cliches (elephant in the room, dark as night, thin as a rake, et fucking c) but I won't.
Why? A couple of reasons:
1) If you liked this book, a part of you is sick, and a larger part of you is an idiot
2) I could write a 100-page thesis about how much this book blew monkey chunks, but it's not worth my time
3) This shit sells, and Hosseini, between his stupid book and movie deals, is an even richer man than he was before ... which in the end, makes him smarter than you, me, and everyone else .... He understands the market and fed it back to us. We probably deserve it. ...more
Oh yah. I forgot about this one. Wow man. This sucked like no book has ever sucked before.
So, this chick who works at Hard Copy calls an ex who is noOh yah. I forgot about this one. Wow man. This sucked like no book has ever sucked before.
So, this chick who works at Hard Copy calls an ex who is now living in Moscow. He's a boozer. She's sad. She feels betrayed that an old flame from college didn't have a fairy tale ending. Boo-hoo.
For the best review EVER of this shit-storm of a book, go to
Am I the only one that hates this book? Found it insulting? Stupid?
Look, I'm not a muslim and I think the way that women are treated in most Islamic Am I the only one that hates this book? Found it insulting? Stupid?
Look, I'm not a muslim and I think the way that women are treated in most Islamic countries is pretty damn barbaric.
Come on, people! This book is FICTION, and with all the efforts people have made to out fake writers like James Frey, Laura Albert, and Kaavya Viswanathan, I can't believe that no one has so much as questioned the veracity of this one.
Saudi princesses don't go making friends with American writers (who can't even speak Arabic, by the way)and then entrust them to their secret diaries. Funny how author Jean Sasson just seems to have a trusting, anonymous female friend in every Arab hot-bed in the world.
Don't believe me? Go to her website and look at her piture for chrissakes, her image is oozing fake writer/hack/fraud. http://www.jeansasson.com/...more
La Petite Américaine
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