Let us begin this blog post with a tortured simile. Ready?
Begin.
Opinions. They’re very much like bags of frozen spinach. (Go
with me on this). Sometimes you just keep stocking up on them without doing
anything much. You just keep piling them on into your freezer/brain, never
keeping track until you suddenly realise you have 10 bags/units of opinion of
the stuff.
'There's loads of food in the freezer' 'Yes, Mum. Mainly Spinach...'
So whilst my family and I have been eating spinach parfait,
spinach crumble, roasted spinach and (the misleadingly named) spinach surprise
over the past few days, I’ve realised that I’ve read book after book since the
last blog post without very much to say. Apart from some choice spinach-based
expletives.
Ach. Ya leafy bastard! (He seemed to say).
After ploughing my way through the 20th century
seminal work of feminist theory that is The
Rules, some people suggested that I should write a companion piece based on
The Game, a similarly sickening guide
to courtship for humans of the male persuasion.
Ugh.
I declined. Honestly, after The Rules my brain became a sort of
porridge. Everywhere I looked, people were either following the rules or
flagrantly disregarding them. It was tiring. It was boring. The prospect of repeating the exercise with The Game appeared as unappealing as
willingly putting myself through a marathon session of Michael Bay’s back
catalogue. Whilst wearing a hair shirt. With itching powder down my pants.
Furthermore I remembered that The Game
is, if not the source, then at least a propagator of the flirting technique
known as ‘negging’:
Negging (V): ‘ To offer low-grade insults
meant to undermine the self-confidence of a woman so she might be more
vulnerable to your advances.’
The world is
not ready to see me that angry. The End.
Although not
quite, as although I chose to give myself a break and avoid dating manuals for
a while, I have been busily tucking into a variety of other books. And although
I would struggle to come up with a theme so universal and all-encompassing as
to knit them all together in a neat parcel, they do deserve some screen-time.
Please accept the first part of my April/May book report, and imagine the doodles in the
margins that got me into so much trouble at school.
Part 1: Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys
Josie Moraine is a prostitute’s daughter. Raised in the
French Quarter of New Orleans, she yearns for a life outside of The Big Easy,
and will stop at nothing to make her dreams of college come true.
Although the prudish side of me baulks at a YA novel set
predominantly in a cat house, there is nothing gratuitous in Sepetys’ writing.
The predominant characters are (for the most part) sympathetically drawn and the
plot was compelling, if occasionally melodramatic. It raced along at a fair old
clip and never quite reached the point where the Eastenders theme tune would have become adequate background noise
to the action.
I did have two major reservations regarding this book,
however. The first is that those African American characters that did make it
into the plot seemed ever so slightly forced. Both were cast as servants who
just adored their white boss, and
cared more about the ups and downs of the Caucasian characters’ lives than they
did their own. It was all just a bit eh…
To illustrate the second issue, please allow me to introduce
you to the much overlooked bit-part character jobbing round many novels these
days, Mr. T-Rexposition.
Hey...
Mr. Rexposition has very little luck, professionally. Although he is cast often, and in a variety
of productions, he has not yet ascended to that pinnacle of a jobbing
character’s career: a decent back story. The parts he (or his sister, Ms.
Rexposition) are given serve to move the plot forward when the narrative style
will not permit otherwise. They are the literary equivalent of ‘Sword Carrier
1’ in historical plays. Two minutes of screen time, an uncanny ability to time
their entrance bearing crucial knowledge with the exact moment that plot
development requires it, then it’s goodbye to watch the action from the wings.
Quick! Your family are in danger! Goodbye....
Mr. Rexposition does not bemoan his fate too much. Rare are the novels (other
than those by Michael Crichton) calling for a character actor specialising in
the Jurassic Period. But he does resent being cast simply for his limitless
availability rather than for his merits. He often feels that authors would
happily send anyone in wearing a fedora/cowboy hat/monacle regardless of their
suitability.
Allow me to introduce myself. Smith's the name. Your house burned down. Goodbye...
This certainly applies in his appearances in Out of the Easy. Mr. Rexposition feels
that with all the description that went into his character, he may as well have
forgone the effort he made finding a greaser’s wig and spats in size XXXXXXXXL and just appeared
as himself, a giant scaly reptile from the land before time, spoken his
page-worth of lines then pissed off.
Grr.. RAAAR. ROAAAR. CHOMP... Goodbye...
Poor Mr. T-Rexposition. I hear he’s applying for a role in
the new Jurassic Park film. Good luck
to him.
I am aware that I’ve devoted over half of this review to a
dubious metaphor, sorry. But although this really does get on my nerves, if
anything else about the book intrigues you, please do not let my whining about
narrative style put you off. Young Adult Fiction is on the up these days
following the success of Twilight, The Fault in our Stars and The Hunger Games, and
very much deserves to be. Out of the Easy
is one of my favourites in the genre so far. But then I do have a weakness
for novels set in the 50s.
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