Gone Girl

Written By Gillian Flynn
Original Publication Date: 2012

Rating: 2 and a Half Stars

Review:

I'm having a really hard time putting into words what I thought of this book.  On one hand it was incredibly easy to read, I've read reviews that said it was slow moving - I disagree - I thought it ebbed and flowed in such a way to make it compulsively readable.  On the other hand, however, all the characters were horrible and evil; I read characters more than I read plots and having such horrible characters just made me crazy.  Anyway, I'll just start writing and see where it leads.

Amy and Nick have been married for 5 years on the day that Amy goes missing.  Their house looks like there has been a struggle: furniture is flipped, their door is left open, etc.  One by one, as the clues come out, the investigation closes in on Nick.

Amy had a charmed life growing up, she was the inspiration for the wildly successful series of children's books, written by her parents, called Amazing Amy.  Nick and Amy met and lived in NYC, writing for various magazines, until they were both laid off.  When Nick's mother was diagnosed with cancer and his father's Alzheimers became much much worse, they move back to Missouri to take care of them.

The problem.  The people in the novel are horrible.  They're all evil.  Even though the books were called Amazing Amy, I was mentally combining Horrible Harry and Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Day to make up 

Horrible Harry Doing Awful Things on the Terrible Horrible No Good Day

Nick is terrible, Amy is terrible, the lawyer is terrible, the cops are terrible.  I hated them all.  I wanted them all to turn up murdered.

And just to make things even worse for me, I didn't have to "figure out" any of the twists of the novel. They were so obvious to me that I just knew them before they happened.  All right, there was one or two that I didn't see coming, but in a novel of that many twists and turns, they should have at least made me think, right? 

I did enjoy the readability factor, I wanted to see how it would wrap up (though the actual ending made me want to kill things), so I read it quickly.  It flowed well, even though it was just unwrapping one terrible thing after another.

Identical

Written By Ellen Hopkins
Original Publication Date: 2008

Rating: One and a Half Stars

Review:

I finished this book last night and I'm still not entirely certain what I want to say about it or how I want to rate it.  I wanted to sleep on it, mull it over - I'm still at a loss.  So, I'm just going to start writing and hope that whatever spills out gives me an appropriate star rating.

What the back of the book says: "Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple.  As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family - on the surface.  But behind the facade, each sister has her own dark secret."

First of all, during the entire book, I couldn't remember the girls' names, so I was calling them Twin 1 and Twin 2.  I'm probably just going to continue that into the review, because that'll let me have more of a stream of consciousness, try to get this all out.  

Twin 1 is being raped by Daddy, and Twin 2 wants to be raped by Daddy.  I almost had to stop reading on page 25.  

"...And if Daddy would just stand

still for me, I'd happily tap his core."

I threw the book against the wall at that point and walked away.  I was pissed, and honestly, I still am.  That was a clue that perhaps this book was written for the shock value, and not entirely for tackling the issue.  I know it's a hard issue to tackle, but I've read books with similar subject matters and none of them have left me with a book on the other side of the room and twitching.  Shock value is not synonymous with tackling difficult issues.  One of the reviews I read on Goodreads, that I can't find at the moment - if you find it, let me know and I'll link to it - called this book "trauma porn."  At this point I am inclined to agree.

Thank Gods after that point the I want to fuck Daddy, erotic language was largely dropped, because that's what made it seem like Hopkins was just trying to get a rise out of us.  There were definitely other scenes that I felt were written for their shock, rather than their value, but nothing that got such a disgusted reaction from me.

Twin 1 is the "weak" twin, who can't say no, is the lead in the school play (Grease).  Twin 2 is the "strong" twin, getting stoned daily, sleeping around with her dealers.  Both twins have eating disorders of various types, and deal with their pain in less-than-healthy ways.  Mom is always away, she's running for Congress, only returning for photo-ops.  Daddy's a judge and he's also an alcoholic, control freak.

It was almost a 600 page book, and I had the big twist figured out in the first 150 or so.  I think if I hadn't figured it out, I would have stopped reading.  It made some of the shock value stuff seem less out-and-out shock value.  I'd explain why, but if you still plan to read this, or are reading it and haven't figured out the big twist, I won't give it away for you.

I think that Ellen Hopkins is an incredibly talented author, I actually enjoyed the prose - and I am not a poetry person, not even a little.  What soured this book for me is that I didn't think she was actually tackling the big issue, I think she was writing to get a rise.  And she got one, but not in a good way.

I think that I'd be interested to read Crank, because that was based on her daughter, so it will probably be less shock-value and more actual value.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower

Written by Stephen Chbosky
Original Publication Date: 1999

Rating: 2 Stars Out Of 5

Review:
There's a certain kind of “coming of age” novel that I simply cannot relate to.  Books like The Catcher in the Rye, Hairstyles of the Damned, and this one.  I'm not sure what differentiates these books from other coming of age stories – I read a fuckload of YA, and 90% of those are coming of age stories.  It has something to do with the “I'm so gifted and weird and punk and cannot communicate with other people so I'm not going to try,” stream of consciousness.  At least I think that's it.  Believe me, I was a weirdo in high school.  I was the wallflower that saw everything and only rarely spoke of it.  I read everything I could get my hands on.  But for some reason these books don't resonate, even a little bit.  They read like bullshit or pretentious fantasy to me.  I don't understand what is so special about those novels.  Maybe I'm just too old for this kind of coming of age story, and when I was the right age, I was too busy coming of age myself, to appreciate them.

What I Disliked About This Book
No fifteen year old boy talks like this, even in writing.  The writing style is that of a seven year old boy.  I think it would have done better if the narrator were in 7th grade, and his friends were all going away to high school at the end of the novel.  A middle school student with that level of writing skill is far more believable.

Even with a learning disability, some form of autism, a trauma, etc. I felt he was too much a weird mishmosh of youth and self-awareness.  Children with autism and learning disabilities think differently, not just younger - it's why I find the brain of those with autism and various other quirks so fascinating.

His ignorance of sex is monumentally ridiculous.  Just because he's gone through a lot and may or may not have some sort of mental special need, doesn't mean he'd be that unaware of himself.  I worked at a camp for kids with special needs, we had to have 'masturbation stations' for kids that had hit puberty, because what kids do understand is that when they do something that feels good, they should keep doing it.

I had the “twist” ending of the novel figured out in the first 50 pages or so.  On top of that, the last 30 pages of a 230 page book were dedicated to spelling out the twist.  I feel like I was bashed over the head a few times with a dictionary, in order to get the “twist” to sink in.  I thought Life of Pi bashed me over the head with its ending; this felt way worse.

What My Inner English Major Thinks
Charlie's maturity level, along with his understanding of sex, froze at the age of 7 when his Aunt Helen died in a car accident.  He wasn't able to move beyond the screwiness of the first 7 years of his life.  That was the first time he was in a mental hospital and his grief and pain froze his maturity level.  It makes the style in which this book was written make a lot more sense.  It was more of a regression than a disorder.

What I Liked About This Book
There was a reason, no matter how thin, for Charlie's maturity level.

The fact that he read a lot, in order to escape the real world.  I was able to relate to this well.  I was very good at disappearing into books when I was a kid.

Sam and Patrick.  They seemed a lot less cookie-cutter than all of Charlies other friends.  There's a formula for the weird kid's friends and most of Charlie's friends sat right on that line.

The drug usage.  As weird as it sounds, I really liked the way that Charlie expressed himself when he was high or on LSD – even though it was a bad trip.

Something That Drove Me A Little Crazy
He obviously disliked abbreviations, such as MASH or e.e. Cummings, but for some reason he was constantly abbreviating “girlfriend” to “girlfr.”  I liked the touch that he didn't enjoy abbreviations, but the “girlfr” thing made me rage.  Charlie didn't strike me as a character that would have liked any kind of textspeak, even his own created textspeak.

Long Story Short
I don't understand what makes this book so special.  However, I believe that the movie may be worth seeing.  I can see most of my annoyances becoming part of the background when it is on film rather than on paper.

I had a hard time picking a rating for this novel, in the end I went with two stars, but it could have been one or three just as easily.