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.

Mini Review: The Bell Jar

Written By Sylvia Plath
Original Publication Date: 1963

Rating: 4 Stars

Let me see if I can phrase this correctly.  I found The Bell Jar to be both an easy read and a difficult one.  Language-wise, the book was easy to read, it flowed; Plath has this way of giving you an entire picture with just a simple few words.  However, where I found it difficult to read was the bluntness and the truthfulness of the decent into a world inundated with dark thoughts and depression.  To some extent, especially when we're in our late teens, early twenties, I think this is something that everyone struggles with.  Trying to find your place in the world is a hard, scary, thing to do and some of us handle it better than others.  Plath encapsulated this in her vaguely autobiographical novel.  She was really writing about the "Quarter-Life Crisis" 30 or 40 years before the phrase came into vogue, and she did so brilliantly and truthfully.

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.

Ariel

Written By Stephen Boyett
Original Publication Date: 1983

Rating: 2.5 Stars Out of 5

Book Notes:

Page 84

"Fred"?  He named his new sword "Fred"?

Page 134

"You moved around a lot in your sleep.  You kept ...rubbing yourself.  You know, on your ... crotch.  It bothered [her]."

HEADFUCKINGDESK

Page 143

He categorizes his sex dreams as "bad dreams."  Whatnow?

Page 224

Ugh.  A Twin Towers: Two Towers reference.  I remember when the movie came out I had to explain to numerous people that no, they didn't need to change the name of the movie out of respect for those who were lost on 9/11, because the Twin Towers didn't exist when Tolkien wrote The Two Towers.  Pet Peeve of DOOOOM.

Page 272

"A bit Tolkien-ish, isn't it?  Washington going to war with New York."

If by Tolkien-ish, we mean that there's a necromancer, like there is in The Hobbit?  Then sure it's Tolkien-ish.  Otherwise, no, not really.  This author seems to like to compare himself to Tolkien.  It is inaccurate and cocky as hell.

Review:

I'd recommend this book for mature-ish 15/16 year old boys.  It's gory and sex-filled.  However, it reads better if you think of Pete as a 16 year old boy rather than a 20 year old.  It doesn't quite qualify as Young Adult, but it comes close.  Pete is a good Young Adult hero, what doesn't make it Young Adult is the length, sex and gore.  The writing style even puts it at borderline Young Adult.

I'm pretty sure I just read a 400 page metaphor for a boy going through puberty; either that or it's a 400 page metaphor for a boy losing his virginity.  Five or six years is a really long time to go through the worst of puberty.  The lights, cars, and guns stopping working is even called The Change! 

The fact that guns stopped working was pretty damned arbitrary, by the way.

When The Change happened, Pete was 14 or 15, just a normal nerdy teenage boy.  He went to his debate event and even when the lights went out, at 4:30, they opened a window shade and kept going.  He walked his girlfriend home in the dark, and when her folks weren't home, they walked to his place with the plan to go back the next day.  They'd spend opposite nights in each others' houses until one set of parents made it home.  Surprisingly enough, that plan didn't work, and that night Pete headed out on his own.

Two years after The Change, Pete was bathing in a clean stream musing on how quickly the waters cleaned up after technology stopped working.  When he looked up, there was a unicorn standing amongst his clothing.  When he got out of the stream, Pete could tell that the creature had a broken leg, and it spoke!  After the Change, mythological creatures started cropping up everywhere.  Unicorns, however, only show themselves and allow them to befriend the purest, the virgins.  Pete names it Ariel.

The sex thing in this novel is so weird.  Pete is so afraid of his own sexuality.  He is so afraid of his sex dreams and when he masturbates in his sleep he really bugs out.  I know he's afraid of losing Ariel, but dear Gods, he's supposed to be 20 or so.  I know the world is different, but it's not so different that men and boys stop physically maturing.  Even though it may have been weird having no one to talk him through puberty, he clearly knows what sex is from the way he describes his dreams.  But he's so goddamned afraid of it and every time someone comes onto him or admits to have had sex, he gets nasty.

Five or six years after The Change is when the bulk of the novel takes place.  (In the novel it says six years, but on the blurb, it says five.  Consistency fail.)  Ariel and Pete have been wandering from town to town, when they meet men on the road who will do anything to posses Ariel, especially her horn.  These men are led by an evil necromancer, who lives in New York City.  They go on a quest, to defeat him, walk to New York where Ariel is taken.  Making a few friends along the way, Pete is able to free Ariel, but only after it is too late for his innocence.

Oh, he wants to kill us with his powerful magics?  We should walk right into his lair!  HERP DERP!

Also, what is it with these characters crying all the fucking time?  After The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I thought I was done with the sobbing main male characters for a while.  I picked up a post apocalyptic book, for Godssake.  But no, Pete cries at everything.  Come on!  Every time he's over tired, scared, confused, angry, etc. etc. etc.  He's been living in this world for 5 or six years, by himself.  Why hasn't he grown up a little more?  At the end of the book Pete finally grows up.  There's an event that forces Ariel to turn away from him.  He couldn't stay a child forever.  Thank Gods.

Two and a half stars because, regardless of how weird and unsettling and arbitrary the sex, gore, and world was, it was actually a fun read.