Kiss the Girls and Make Them Spy

2001, first edition, from HarperEntertainment
Mabel Maney
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Spy: An Original Jane Bond Parody
Bought newish for $14.00
Worn paperback
C-

I don't know if it's that I've never read a James Bond novel, and I think I've only seen one movie all the way through, but I didn't get much out of this book.  On the other hand, I didn't grow up reading Nancy Drew or Cherry Ames, but I enjoyed Maney's earlier parodies.  And, despite a plot to reinstate Edward VIII (in 1965), this has none of the loopy charm of Ted Mark's Here's Your O.R.G.Y. (1969).  I liked only two of the characters, Jane's bookshop employer/chum and the cat-crazy old lady.  Worst of all, there's none of the clip-art-on-acid like in the Nancy & Cherry series. 

Only the sort of amusing names, like Lady Wooley-Booley and Bibi Gallini, and the fashion descriptions kept this from a D+, and even there, it felt fresher in Maney's '90s works.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

2001, "originally published in hardcover in slightly different form...in 2000," this edition from Vintage (Random House)
Dave Eggers
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Original price $14.00, purchase price $2.00
Worn paperback
C-

In "Mistakes We Were Making," the sort of afterword/update that you have to flip the book over to read, Eggers complains that many people assumed his book is ironic, when it's just funny.  The real irony is that the book isn't funny.  While his namesake David Sedaris can make me laugh out loud, even when I don't like the subjects (in both the "people" and "topics" senses), Eggers keeps undercutting himself.  If the whole book had been along the lines of the copyright page, then I might've liked it about equally to the 250-years-older Tristam Shandy, but unlike Sterne, Eggers doesn't sustain this.  Even as a memoir of what it was like to be orphaned at 22 and raise his 7/8/9-year-old brother (the chronology is really screwy), it doesn't work because Eggers, yes, sidetracks himself.

Another irony, considering Eggers's weird racial and gender issues, is that the book this most reminded me of was McMillan's How Stella Got Her Groove Back, in that it's "autobiographical fiction"* but I couldn't tell how much of the unreliable and/or unpleasant narrator was unintentional.  Also, they both keep emphasizing their own coolness, and yes, they doth protest too much.  And thirdly, they both are set in very specific times and places-- '90s Northern California in both, as well as respectively Illinois and Jamaica-- that it's interesting to visit in book form, but the settings unfortunately take a backseat to the characters, themes, and so-called plots.  I moved to the Silicon Valley in '94, so I wanted to know more about Berkeley and San Francisco at that time, but this isn't the book to inform me.  And when I'd tell myself, "OK, forget about the single/young parent thing, because Eggers has, let's focus on his experience at Might magazine," Eggers would do what he could to make that sound unappealing.  (If you can't even get a good story out of faking Adam Rich's death, there's not much hope for you.)

As with Stella, I was in a way more annoyed with this book than with something that deserves a D+ or lower.  There are some not-bad passages, there is potential.  But Eggers seems determined to frustrate the reader on every front.  

And then I looked up Eggers, thinking this was probably a one-hit wonder (best-seller, Pulitzer nominee).  No, actually he's still (at 43) considered one of the best writers of his (and, ugh, my) generation.  But I did feel vindicated because he cowrote the abysmal screenplay to Where the Wild Things Are (2009), which has some of the same flaws as this book, including a lack of resolution.  


*So why does this get the "biography" tag and that didn't?  I guess because the main "characters'" names are unchanged here.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back

1996, 1998 Signet movie-tie-in edition
Terry McMillan
How Stella Got Her Groove Back
Original price $7.99, purchase price $1.98
Falling apart paperback
C-

As with Bridget Jones's Diary, the background to this novel is more interesting than the book, in this case quite a bit more interesting.  Middle-aged McMillan was inspired by her own romance with a young local man she met while on vacation in Jamaica.  They got married the year this edition (and the movie) came out, but he later told her he was gay, and, well, let's just say that McMillan did not end up as happily divorced as Fran Drescher.  

As for the book, well, I will admit that the actual romance parts of it are good.  (McMillan can make even kissing sound very lush and steamy.)  Unfortunately, I didn't care about the people in the romance, Stella and Winston.  He's offpage much more than he's around, but we get far too much of Stella.  I don't know if she's reflecting McMillan's own opinions, or if McMillan decided to make her an unreliable and unpleasant narrator, but Stella rambles on (often comma-less) about everything from her taste in music and literature (the moment when she dismisses Waiting to Exhale feels less earned than when Sinclair Lewis would mock himself 50 to 70 years earlier), to her seriously weird body issues.  On the one hand, she thinks women's genitalia stink and she "sprays" herself as often as possible.  On the other hand, she adores men's bodies, as long as they're not too white, fat, and/or old (over 50).  At one point, she asks her eleven-year-old son about his "little unit," including how big it is.  He shows her his pubic hair!

The "groove" in the title is not only Stella's love life (which has lately consisted of sex with a married man she dislikes), but also her work life.  The latter is neatly resolved when she's fired from her corporate job that she doesn't care about, except for the money, and eventually decides to design furniture, at Winston's encouragement, although the reader probably thought of it 300 or 400 pages earlier.  

When I said that McMillan does well with romance, I mostly meant the physical, swoony side.  Unfortunately, she makes Stella (who brags about her confidence) incredibly insecure, ready to break up with Winston whenever he's late or he doesn't call when she expects, or simply if he hasn't yet told her that day that he adores her.  She thinks she's being tough and independent, but she comes across as a worse basketcase than Bridget Jones, and that's saying something.  A divorced 42-year-old woman, one who has other men throwing themselves at her throughout the novel, should really know better.  Alas, I don't think McMillan knew any more than her protagonist.  

You can see why I find Once More with Feeling, where characters actually communicate and act like adults, my favorite chick-lit book so far.

Bad Movies We Love

1993, undated later edition, from Plume
Edward Margulies and Stephen Rebello
Bad Movies We Love
Bought new for $12.00
Worn paperback with stains
C-

I originally bought this book because I felt like sometimes the Medveds acted like turkeys are a punishment to watch (even when you're writing books about them).  What a nice change, two people who love bad movies.  I guess I should've paid more attention to the "we" in the title.  "If you love wallowing in glossy, overproduced absurdities, you'll be howling through the length of" Doctors' Wives (1970).  Well, no, I don't generally love wallowing in those kind of movies, or the ones in here that sound like big-screen bad soap operas.  I understand that they're reacting against the emphasis by the Medveds (and soon the MST crew) on unglossy, underproduced absurdities, but I don't think a low or a high budget automatically makes a bad movie (or Bad Movie as they insist on capitalizing) more enjoyable to watch.  And considering that Margulies and Rebello find even rape scenes funny (as long as the dialogue and acting are bad enough), I'm unlikely to even like most of the movies they love.

That said, there are a few movies in here that they're on target about-- The Swinger (1966) and Can't Stop the Music (1980) spring to mind-- and it was nice to see that they found Fatal Attraction (1987) as funny as I did.  But a whole chapter on Sharon Stone?  (She was good sport enough to write a short foreword.)  Other chapters dedicated to Mickey Rourke and Troy Donahue?  (OK, I am curious about Susan Slade [1961], but mostly because of the cast.)  And, no, this book isn't so bad it's good.

The Temple of My Familiar

1989, 1990 Pocket Books edition
Alice Walker
The Temple of My Familiar
Bought newish for $5.95
Very worn paperback
C-

As with The Color Purple, this book is not as good as it was 20+ years ago.  Although it engaged me more this time than Purple, it also annoyed me more.  I found the most interesting character to be the half-sister of the granddaughter of Celie from the previous book.  (The family tree is complicated, particularly when you factor in reincarnation.)  She's just about the only one who feels like she's living a life, rather than just proving a thesis.  Everyone, including her but especially Miss Lissie, is given to speech-making and educating each other and the reader.  I was especially annoyed when two characters discusses Quicksand, such a superior book.  While there is a part of me that is sympathetic to Walker's feminist paganist vision, I would rather have read that material in the form of poetry (and I generally don't like poetry), or had her make plausible characters first, and have their "growth" genuinely emerge.

The '90s: A Look Back

1989, first edition, from Avon
Edited by Tony Hendra & Peter Elbling
(with many contributors, including George Carlin, Bill Murray, Penn & Teller, Bob Saget, and Mike Wallace)
The '90s: A Look Back
Bought newish for $12.95
Worn paperback
C-

While I used to enjoy the '80s "look back" more than I now do, I'd always seen this as a lesser follow-up, so I was curious to see if it'd improved over time, or at least not declined as much as its predecessor.  Well, I gave a C+ to the first book.  Not only doesn't this have the thorough approach of the '80s book, but there are times when it's not merely unfunny but actually nonfunny or even anti-funny, as if deliberately not amusing the reader.  At other times, the writers seem to think that merely referring to something will be an automatic laugh.  For instance, while it's untrue that jokes about bestiality are never funny, it's also untrue that they're always funny.  The section on sex with small mammals could've worked (in a sick way) if the contributor were wittier.  On the other hand, even in my early 20s I was baffled by why the book closes out with a totally gratuitous insult to "women's writing," one that probably would amuse only the most rabid misogynist and seems to only serve the purpose of insulting half the readers.

That said, I thought Bob Saget's essay as a stay-at-home father/grandfather, nursing his 10-year-old daughter's baby, was kind of funny.  (Particularly when you remember that he'd just started an eight-year run on Full House.)  Jokes can be both fine and politically incorrect if they're well (or at least competently) done.  When I see a photoshopped (or '80s equivalent) nude Marilyn Quayle, I'm not sure how to take it, especially as it's part of their Dragon Lady view of 1990s world leaders.  It definitely doesn't work to have jokes about both the homeless (including the Reagans) and the second-homeless, because it gives an inconsistent view of the American economy in this fictitious decade.  The '80s book gave more of a sense of continuity.

As for how this stacks up to the "real" 1990s (and let's face it, they did feel a bit surreal), the parts on China and Russia (Raisa's coup aside) were closest to reality, as those countries ceased to be Communist.  On the other hand, King Chuck the Equal didn't exactly become ruler after Thatcher beheaded Elizabeth II.

MAD, Volume 1

1986, first edition, from Russ Cochran, Publisher
MAD, Volume 1
Bought newish for unknown
Worn hardcover
C-

Like I said back in the '50s, I think Harvey Kurtzman is over-rated, and certainly this collection of the first six issues of MAD shows why.  He seems to have almost no concept of how to set up a joke, some of the endings to the stories being particularly ham-fisted, such as "Yes, Dear Reader!  The machine did break!" and "For, you see...Bumble...Fumbled!", both in issue #1.  That said, he improves somewhat as things go along, although the text-only stories, like the Cosmo McMoon ones, never work.  It is nice to see the artwork in color, although it also is not great to start out with.  I like the interviews with Kurtzman and Gaines, including their memories of how the outrageous "Publisher of the Issue" profile got in the magazine while Kurtman was in the hospital.  It figures that the funniest piece in the first half dozen issues had to sneak in behind his back. 

"'I don' care if it don't gotta plot!  I don' care if it don't got grammar!  I don' care if the pitchers ain't from talent!  All I care is get into every story sadism, snakes, masochism, pyromania, snakes, fetishes, snakes, necrophilia, phallic symbols, snakes, and all the rest of that esoterica what I can't think of this minute.'"  Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I rest my case.

OK, OK, Exhibit B to follow....

Hollywood Films of the Seventies

1984, first edition, from Harper & Row
Seth Cagin and Philip Dray
Hollywood Films of the Seventies:  Sex, Drugs, Violence, Rock 'n' Roll and Politics
Original price unknown, purchase price $6.50
Good condition hardcover
C-

As with Hoberman and Rosenbaum's Midnight Movies, I am definitely not the audience for this book, or the movies it covers.  You might think that the two books are mutually exclusive, but in fact some films are in both (and Cult Movies 1 or 2), such as Clockwork Orange.  I find that Cagin and Dray handle violent content in movies, and more particularly the explanations of such directors as Kubrick and Peckinpah, in too unquestioning a manner, without even Rosenbaum and Hoberman's reservations, to say nothing of Danny Peary's consideration.  That Dray and Cagin have a left-wing perspective makes their attitude towards violence even worse, as they fall into the trap of thinking that showing violence is condemning it.  Also, they almost ignore one of the most significant political movements of the 1970s: feminism.  Like "black" movies getting not much more than a paragraph, movies about women and the role of women in mainstream movies are discussed only sporadically.

But then this isn't really a book about the 1970s, or not entirely.  There is in fact much more time spent on the late 1960s, or even the late 1950s, than on the late 1970s.  In fact, 1977 to 1983 is mostly in the Epilogue.  What we have here is another example, like Generation in Motion, of Baby-Boomers who have a very narrow view of what they might as well call The Epigonic Decade.  While Cagin and Dray seem at first to be presenting the 1970s as the time when the concerns of the 1960s found fuller expression on the big screen (thanks to a new generation of film-makers), by 1977 "escapist blockbusters" have triumphed and the dream is over.

Of course, that I spent most of the 1970s watching Disney movies on the big screen and old movies on the little screen probably disqualifies me as an authority, but Hollywood cinema did include the following movies that they don't profile: Harold and Maude (1971), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Foul Play (1978), and The Muppet Movie (1979).  Any one of these is going to tell you more about the 1970s-- and sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, or even politics-- than the likes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Rebel without a Cause.  And they're a hell of a lot more entertaining, too.

The Color Purple

1982, 1985 Pocket Books edition
Alice Walker
The Color Purple
Bought newish for $5.99
Worn paperback
C-

What happened?  I remembered this as an amazing story that goes from rape and exploitation to a celebration of life.  Now, even reading the title-drop passage about how God gets pissed off if you don't notice beauty, like the color purple, I feel meh.  I didn't much care about Celie's life in the South, where she's saved by love and pants, or about Nettie's life in Africa, where she comes off sounding hypocritical or at least clueless.  And the coincidences in the novel verge on Dickensian, without Dickens's charm.  This book makes me appreciate all the more how Nella Larsen handled many of these themes and issues-- religion, music, clothing, heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, friendship, violence, class, race, etc.-- with such skill and style back in the '20s.

It's not a terrible book, but I definitely no longer see it as beautiful.  Sorry, God, if that pisses You off.

The Book of Predictions

1981, later edition, from Bantam
David Wallechinksy, Amy Wallace, and Irving Wallace
The People's Almanac Presents the Book of Predictions
Possibly bought newish for $3.95
Worn paperback
C-

Although you might think it would be fun to look back at predictions of the future some three decades later, this is a mostly boring collection.  (It does pick up as it goes on.)  I think the two most ironic things are the predicted 1985 headline "KING CHARLES CHOOSES QUEEN" and, more sadly, Jessica Savitch making predictions, when she herself would die in a car accident in 1983, at the age of 36.

Most of the predictions are overly optimistic, with near-utopias by 2030.  Even the predictions of technology that came true, such as email, were a decade or two later than expected.  Online comments that go into specifics can be found here and here:
http://www.paullee.com/ghosts/bookofpredictions.html
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2008/06/the-book-of-pre

But the best failures are on the list of National Enquirer failed predictions for the late 1970s, such as "In 1979, Spiro Agnew will win a cinema acting award."

The Official Smart Kids/ Dumb Parents Joke Book

1977, Pinnacle edition from later that year
Larry Wilde
Illustrations by Ron Wing
The Official Smart Kids/ Dumb Parents Joke Book
Bought new for $1.25
Very worn paperback with stains
C-

Wilde collects lots of corny jokes, not even necessarily about kids or parents.  The book is "two in one," in that you flip over the "kid" side and then read the "parent" side, or vice versa.  The illustrations are kind of ugly.  I'd give the book an even lower grade but I did like the knock-knock jokes and "Little Willies" (sort of sick rhymes from the Victorian era).  I don't remember what I thought of the sexism (especially about women drivers) in my preteens, but I do know I didn't quite get the suggestive jokes.  The one that stayed with me all these years is a variation on this one:
http://www.jokedujour.com/archive/kidS10.htm

Wilde also published ethnic joke books, such as "The Official Polish/ Italian Joke Book."  He's still around, as a motivational speaker among other professions, and his website is http://www.larrywilde.com/ if you're curious.

The Tin Can Tree

1965
Anne Tyler
The Tin Can Tree
C-

It's an accomplishment of sorts that this is actually worse than If Morning Ever Comes.  It contains one of her worst characters, Ansel Green, a boring, self-centered hypochondriac whose brother James feels obligated to take care of him, to the point that James will probably never marry the neighbor he loves.  There's a 6-year-old whose death happens shortly before the novel begins, but I felt like the grief wasn't believable.  There were mildly interesting parts, like James's photography, and to my surprise a part with Ansel (the pizza), but I just found it an unrewarding read.

The Graduate

1963, undated but probably 1967 edition, from Signet
Charles Webb
The Graduate
Original price unknown, purchase price $1.35
Very worn paperback
C-

"Brilliant...sardonic, ludicrously funny." 
"Now a hilarious Motion Picture."

If you strip away the fantastic Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack and the impressive cast, you're left with the story of a young man who reluctantly has an affair with an older woman* and then "falls in love" with her daughter.  Even that sounds more interesting than what you get, a book that is almost pure dialogue, and not very good dialogue at that.  Not to mention that Benjamin's stalking of the admittedly (but understandably) ambivalent Elaine is even less excusable when there's no insight into what any of the characters are feeling.  The closest we get is we're told that Mr. Robinson is distraught, but we don't see it. 

Is the book funny?  A little I guess, although the best line, "Plastics," is only in the Buck Henry screenplay.  I also think that Benjamin's alienation is conveyed better when we actually see the trappings of upper-middle-class suburbia.  (Webb is not big on description.)  And yet, as the inspiration for the movie, and a (not very detailed) record of California in the early 1960s, the book is of some note, so I won't give it a lower grade than The Affairs of Gidget.

*Mrs. Robinson would qualify as the original MILF, except she's more of a MISBIMASWF (Mom I'm So Bored I Might As Well F).

The Affairs of Gidget

1963, possibly first edition, from Bantam
Frederick Kohner
The Affairs of Gidget
Original price unknown, purchase price $1.35
Very worn paperback
C-

I'd already seen the movies, TV-movies, and TV series by the time I found this in a used bookstore.  Who could resist such a racy title, particularly about the wholesome girl-midget?  Well, it turns out that Gidget is actually obsessed with sex, since "Undersized girls have oversized drives."  Jezebel has an interesting piece on the contrast between book-Gidget and screen-Gidget:  http://jezebel.com/5541992/the-sexual-history-of-gidget .  It seems that it's not just in this Gidget book (the only one I've read) that the plucky but not plucked protagonist almost-loses-her-virginity on a regular basis.  And usually it's not Moondoggie who might do the plucking.  And Kohner based Gidget on his surf-loving daughter, so that makes it even weirder.

While on the one hand, it's nice to have a 19-year-old heroine with an interest in sex, I am troubled by the "choices" over whom she might give her cherry to.  Like a Lessing heroine, she drifts into affairs (basically makeout sessions, although maybe not more than necking) with a married professor, a stupid jock, and a divorced dentist with a daughter.  Actually, with the last, they only kiss a couple times and mostly just sit around listening to his impressive hi-fi set.  It even plays tapes!  With the first two affairs, there's a lot of romance novel "my resistance was overpowered by his powerful smooches," made more disquieting by her emphasis on her petiteness being no match for the girth of the men, particularly the 250-pound jock.  In the case of the professor, he allegedly has an open marriage (well, he says they have an understanding, yet it's unclear if he's lying), but Gidget is hesitant because the wife is (gasp!) Asian, (shudder!) nice, and (good God no!) seven-months pregnant.  The dentist seems like an improvement, but Gidget realizes that he'll only ever truly love his daughter. 

As for Gidget's own father, he's a European "libertine" who lived in sin with Gidget's mom a few years before they were married.  So he's more understanding than most dads would be about his daughter's experimentation, but advises her to be more honest and careful.  This would be cool, if the author-father hadn't produced such a leering book.  (Gidget at one point describes herself as "round, peachy and fully-packed.")

My main problem with the book though is that Gidget is the most unpleasant 19-year-old girl in my fiction collection since From 18 to 20.  I said of that 1888 book, "To the extent that Beatrice has any personality, it's because she's unpleasant....She makes lots of snarky comments about women and girls, including how boring and hypocritical they are."  Gidget does have more personality than Beatrice, including loads of slang, but I think she's a lot more sneering.  It begins in the first chapter, with Gidget deliberately antagonizing her slightly unpleasant new roommate to the point of letting a bird shit in the roomie's bed.  And later there are some cruel insults of the menopausal housemother.  And I must say I'm baffled by the character assassination Kohner does on Mrs. Riley in less than 100 pages.  She starts out as warm and friendly, but by the end she's a Mrs. Grundy, simply because the plot calls for it.

Similarly, the prof has a beard and is Existentialist, but he hates beatniks.  Wha???  The book is certainly topical, from JFK to the Kingston Trio, so that adds some interest.  But I wouldn't recommend it to any but the curious.

The Return of Jeeves

1953
P. G. Wodehouse
The Return of Jeeves
C-

Don't let the title get your hopes up.  Yes, Jeeves returns, but he's working for someone else while Bertie is off getting post-war lessons on taking care of himself, like ironing.  Jeeves's new employer has no patience with Jeeves's literary quotes, or much other appreciation of him.  Again, we get staleness, typos, and warped romance.  (This time, "I'll steal a pendant from the woman I gave it to years ago, even though she thinks it's from one of her late husbands, so I can use it to bet on a race, and then you can marry your girl, who is suspicious of you sneaking out of my woman's room in your pyjamas.")  No mention of Hollywood though.

The Old Reliable

1950
P. G. Wodehouse
The Old Reliable
C-

This is much like Spring Fever, in that it is a bit boring, has lots of typos, mildly satirises Hollywood, and presents a warped view of romance.  The title character is "Aunt Bill," short for Wilhelmina, a down on her luck writer who one, has had a mostly unrequited crush on her sister's brother-in-law for twenty years even though he's scared of marriage; two, encourages her friend Joe to keep proposing to her niece Kay, even though Kay has turned him down fifteen times and he has threatened to break a bottle over Kay's head; and three, slips a Mickey Finn into Joe's drink to make Kay feel sorry for him.  (It works.)  Meanwhile, Bill is ghost-writing her sister's autobiography about being an actress in the silent-movie days.  And there's a red-hot diary by another actress, now dead.  And a butler who knows how to crack safes.  And lots of quotes of Shakespeare by Bill.  And it feels rather stale, all the more so for then almost 70-year-old Wodehouse attempting to be modern.  (At one point he uses "Hedy Lamarr" and "Lily Langtry" in the same sentence.)

Spring Fever

1948, as part of 1983 Avenel edition of P. G. Wodehouse: Five Complete Novels
P. G. Wodehouse
Spring Fever
Original price $15.70, purchase price $9.99
Good condition hardcover
C-

Unlike the '30s Jeeves books, I seldom reread this volume, and this story is a good example of why.  The plots and subplots are kind of boring.  Also, the "hero" likes to jokingly insult and threaten violence to the "heroine."  There are occasional flashes of the Wodehouse wit, and a bit of insight into Hollywood, but it's rather a slog to get to them.  Not exactly terrible, but not something I'd recommend.  The title has little to do with the story, other than it's set in the spring, and the cast is mostly dim-witted, although not feverish.

Also, this novel is riddled with typos, often of the extra-letter-in-a-word variety, I suspect due to Avenel trying to cash in on Wodehouse's name.

The Sick Child

1944
Colette, translated by Antonia White
The Sick Child
C-


The title character lives a life of fantasy, until he gets well.  Too drawn out, although there are a few nice turns of phrase.

Claudine Married

1902
Colette
Claudine Married
C-

I don't care for either of Claudine's romances in this story.  The father-husband thing with Renaud is troubling, especially when they're both flirting with 14-year-old girls.  When she falls for the beautiful but boring and deceitful married woman Rezi, he encourages her and even finds a love nest for them.  Then he has a fling with Rezi himself.  Claudine finds out and returns to her father's country home.  (The Slugman has gotten sick of Paris by this time.)  The happy ending is supposed to be that Claudine reconciles with Renaud, planning to tell him, "I order you to dominate me!"  I'm just glad that Claudine plans to live in the country permanently, with the much more interesting "menage" of Papa, Melie, and Fanchette, while Renaud visits occasionally.

Two "1902" notes of interest.  This is the first work I own to mention "motor-cars."  Also, there's a "feminist" writer at a party, but it's a man and too minor a character for us to find out anything else about his writing.

Shirley

1849, 1974 Penguin Classics edition
Charlotte Brontë
Shirley: A Tale
Original price $4.95, bought newish?
A bit worn paperback
C-

Easily the worst of Brontë's novels, this is also the worst novel I've read so far in this project.  The other C-s are all part of that Shakespeare collection, so it's not like I'll be getting rid of them.  With this book, I'll decide later whether to keep the discrete C-s.  As for why this scores so low, it  blends a boring historical plot of the early days (1811-12) of the Industrial Revolution with not one but two icky romances.  The best two things about it are the mockery of three Yorkshire curates (based on actual people, including ironically her future husband) and the women's rights pleas.  Even more than Jane Eyre, this novel shows the difficulties of single middle-class girls and women, who had so few options.  In fact, Brontë puts the words of a negative reviewer of Jane Eyre into the mouths of some upper-class women who are berating a governess.

This makes it all the more frustrating that she gives her two intelligent co-heroines, the title character and Caroline, such unpleasant suitors.  Robert Moore is focused on money over emotion, to the point that he proposes to clever, beautiful Shirley only because she's an heiress.  Caroline lapses into a Marianne-Dashwood-like fever brought on by months of rejection, only to be saved by finding out that Shirley's ex-governess is Caroline's long-lost mother.

As for the romance between Robert's brother and Shirley, here's Louis Moore talking about the woman he loves, except wishing that she were poor:  "Something to tame first, and teach afterwards: to break in and then to fondle. To lift the destitute proud thing out of poverty; to establish power over, and then to be indulgent to the capricious moods that never were influenced and never indulged before; to see her alternately irritated and subdued about twelve times in the twenty-four hours; and perhaps, eventually, when her training was accomplished, to behold her the exemplary and patient mother of about a dozen children, only now and then lending little Louis a cordial cuff by way of paying the interest of the vast debt she owes his father."  That this is exactly the kind of man that Shirley wants, someone to tame the "lioness" that everyone sees her as, does not make it more palatable to me.

The first third of the 560-page novel is the dullest, the last third the most unpleasant.  The story behind the story is much more interesting, although tragic.  The author's three surviving siblings all died during 1848-49, and yet Charlotte continued to struggle to write.  Also, the title is interesting in that Shirley herself doesn't show up till several chapters in (part of why the first third is boring), and she has been given a boy's name and jokes about how she would act if she were Captain Keeldar, the male version of herself.  This is weird for someone born in the 20th century, because of course "Shirley" suggests Miss Temple.  In fact, the popularity of this novel changed "Shirley" from a boy's name to a girl's.