Good writers write to put books on the shelf that they haven't seen before. And sometimes the more motivated amongst us actually thrill the rest of the pack with that little gimmicky book we always dreamed about but seemed like too much effort. THANK YOU, HEATHER, for taking the labor off me and delighting me.
One of my first defining entries into reading in English was the "Young Indiana Jones Chronicles/ Choose Your Own Adventure" books. That was the kind of shameless but thrilling capitalistic cash-in that I'd been deprived of all my life and Gosh did I take to it like KRAZY! You could CHOOSE where the book went! CHOICES! There weren't a heck of a lot of choices in Cuba, I'm sure you can glean that.
So what do we have here?
A "Do Over" Novel with 150 endings. You start out as a girl just off high school and you can choose to either go to college or travel around a little. Say you go to college- do you major in arts or sciences? Okay, suppose you go with science. Do you devote yourself to working for your brilliant-but-heartless boss in his search for a killer laser signal that will stop hearts from beating from a mile away? Or do you steal the secret and sell it to the highest bidder? And then, well, guess what, on the way to the secret meet up that will make you a millionaire some drunken asshole on an RV rams into you and sends you and your killer laser secret to an early grave.
Or you could end up a happy matron in Italy.
A suicidal rock star.
A transexual granny in Maryland.
It's real easy to misunderstand this book, and not get it. If you just dip in and read one life or two, you might smirk- I went to Amazon and look at this, from Kirkus Reviews:
"[A]n occasionally clever book that will appeal only to a very limited audience of grown-up readers who are unfazed by its methodology....Interesting to read for about ten minutes, but some things really are just for kids."
Obviously the reviewer did only devote ten minutes or so to the book, and failed to notice the wealth of subtle wisdom and intelligent writing and cumulative power that this singular book has... because you CAN tooootally end up in a chick-lit life in Tuscany where you have to choose between Paolo the gardener with the big dick but no money, or 60 year old Arnaldo with his hands in all sort of pies.
This book COULD be a Cosmo diversion.
But that may be because you didn't read about the life that you spent in Iceland studying the old sagas and being accused of withcraft... or the life where you settle down with a big fat Aristotle-quoting trucker that cusses like his mama never taught him any better but is the REAL LOVE OF YOUR LIFE.
Or hell, you could be a homeless lady in Atlanta.
Or... Travel again, take detours, let yourself end up where you didn't think you might have.
It looks like chick lit, it's wrapped like chick lit, and it seems like it's a pain to explore, but Heather McElhatton has actually written a wise, funny, sad, novel about LIFE- and I have a TOTAL mind-crush on this woman.
Very, very entertaining, and only as superficial as you want it to be.
Bravo.
(A typical "doesn't-get-it" bad review on Amazon?) "I tried and a lot of those lives ended with a creepy death!"
Yeeeeeeeeeees ma'am.
Your life is going to end up in a creepy death too.
THAT'S LIFE!!!
0 comments:
Post a Comment