contemporary – Bookspoils

Girlhood and Coming-of-Age Review: The Girls from Corona del Mar by Rufi Thorpe

November 11, 2018June 8, 2020 bookspoilsLeave a comment

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I was on the search for a lightweight book to bring with me for a day full of travel, when the simple beauty of this cover, filled in tan, freckled skin, enthralled this fellow tan, freckled gal to pick it from the tucked away library shelf. Funnily enough, I made a trek back to the library later that same day to grab the book because it wouldn’t escape my mind from that morning sighting when I had failed to pick it up.

Rainbow Rowell recommended Rufi Thorpe’s Dear Fang, With Love years ago, which meant for me that this author would nail down life specificities the way I enjoy in Rowell’s books. The Girls from Corona del Mar did not disappoint within the first page, reading about a loving family’s presence in Lorrie Ann’s life.

And it took me a single sitting, reading swiftly through ten pages, to realize this was something to hold on to. I particularly enjoyed how the first couple of pages started with a tantalizing proclamation, “You’re going to have to break one of my toes,” then veered off to familiarize these characters, and ended the paragraph the same way it started so that we’re included in their motives; a full circle.

Set in the mid-90s, The Girls from Corona del Mar follows two best friends, Mia and Lorrie Ann, through spot-on observations on life, growing together and apart, and always having that nature pull to return to each other. This read like an extremely attentive and introspective novel, full of vivid stories on Mia’s lifelong friendship with Lorrie Ann. My mind was bursting with all that I wanted to note down with each page I read. You know it’s a good book when you close your eyes at the end of the day and continue completing the story in your head.

Normally, friendships between girls are stowed away in boxes of postcards and ticket stubs, but whatever was between me and Lorrie Ann was not so easy to set aside.

I was surprised to find a unique storytelling mode where, instead of having two narrators who each tell their own tale, we follow Mia’s perspective of Lorrie Ann’s toils through the details Lor gives her best friend. You can peek this in the passage below:

“I love you,” Lorrie Ann lied. (Was it a lie? I never knew, exactly. I couldn’t understand her love for Jim and so I made my peace with Lor’s decisions by assuming her feelings for him were either feigned or a delusion, but perhaps they were not. Perhaps she loved him with the same animal part of herself that couldn’t let that baby go.)

I really liked how the author gained control with this little insert because Mia went a little off-task into Lor’s (the name Lorrie Ann is a pain to type) world, and the usage of first-person brought it back to the narrator.

I’ll be honest by saying right off the bat I was as wrapped around Lorrie Ann’s finger as much as Mia. Something about the utter kindness and goodness of her always shone so brightly on the page. It’s best told in this incident that captures Lor’s character through the author’s storytelling:

Once, when we were about ten, Lorrie Ann had been given too much change at the Chevron snack shop: she had paid with a ten, but the man must have thought she gave him a twenty. Lorrie Ann didn’t even notice until we were five blocks away, and then insisted we walk all the way back so that she could give him that unearned ten-dollar bill, which as I recall was soft and wrinkled like wilted lettuce. I am sure Lorrie Ann would never remember that day, such an insignificant anecdote, but in my mind it became a central organizing allegory about the differences between us.
Everything I had in life was half stolen, a secret, wilt-y ten-dollar bill that Lorrie Ann would have been too good to keep, but which I could not force myself to give away.

What makes so much of these eyeful remarks is how grounded in reality they are.

I was initially won over by Lorrie Ann with this truthful statement when faced clearly, at only eighteen, with an impossible choice: “But don’t you learn to love someone?” Lorrie Ann asked.

This right here is what too many novels fail to realize when they proclaim that love is all or nothing. Love isn’t some overbearing emotion that takes control of your sane thought process, love is something that you need to discover how to do with morality. “You don’t fall in love. You grow in love.” Love is recognizing the grandiosity of the person standing before you; love is including that person within your own being.

Her thought process of said impossible choice is demonstrated touchingly. She had this terrible death happen within her family, which she concludes as her fault for not being good enough or observant enough of the signs in her life, so she doesn’t want to set off something now that’ll make bad things appear back in her life. She chooses what she deems the right thing. What follows changes the trajectory of her life and Mia’s along with her.

And yet it was not me but Lorrie Ann whom the vultures of bad luck kept on visiting, darkening the yard of her house, tapping on the panes of her windows with their musty, blood-crusted beaks.“Wake up, little girl!” they cried.“We’ve got something else for you!

I felt suspended the entire time I read through this reflective and tumultuous story. So much of this novel is built on the many tragedies that befall Lor despite her best. And I kept wallowing over just how many there are… I mean, I came to relish whenever Lor walked back into Mia’s life, though knowing it’s only when something unfortunate happened made it a bittersweet pill to swallow.

At a certain point, when the only times these two communicate is when something bad occurs to Lorrie Ann, it became an exhausting process of “Oh, what now?” It read like a condensed version of A Little Life, which I liked for the subtle quips on life but disliked immensely for throwing tragedy after tragedy my way. It takes away from the realness of life when we only meet these two characters when tragedy strikes. I wanted to spend more time in the in-between moments that make up a lifetime. When everything’s shit, however, it makes you appreciate little gestures of kindness, simple as a sweet nurse over the phone reassuring Lorrie Ann.

On a random note, I enjoyed how the title chapters are indicant of what’s ahead. It’s a little touch that shows how much a book means to an author.

And I’m still so in awe at how this book kept me enthralled page by page with its eyeful observations. This is an author that lets no moment slip by; you have to be really sensitive of your reality to succeed in writing down what you see in real life. And I, for one, am a complete sucker when it comes to introspective novels that reveal a deeper layer that lies within us.

The Girls from Corona del Mar nails down the complexity of maintaining a long-distance friendship. I admired, in particular, what was said about feeling like a character in a book, like, you don’t exist unless I pick you up.

“That came out awful, but what I mean is that when you are a half a world away, it seems more like something happening in a novel, you know, and we’ve lived apart for so many years now that you are kind of like that for me, except when I see you, then you are suddenly terribly real, and that made Jim’s death real and now I feel like I can’t catch my breath because everything is too real for words.”
Lorrie Ann looked at me critically for a moment, as though I were a gem she were assessing through one of those tiny eyepieces. Then she said, “I know exactly what you mean. For most of the year you are just a character in a book I’m reading. And then when you do show up, I think: Oh, God, it’s her! It’s her. The girl I knew when I was a kid. My friend.”

This is such a sweet moment too real for words… And then this moment on how talking over the phone never fully captures the true experience in a single phrase: “I’m not sure,” Lorrie Ann said, and I wished I could read her face.”

They hold this interesting dynamic wherein Mia feels forever endowed by Lorrie Anne’s virtue. Her “opposite twin.”

I did not pursue my relationship with either for personal reasons, but because I sincerely believed they were the two best specimens of humanity I had yet to run across on the planet.

But when this book turns bad, it goes down all the way. It hit a point of no return after the 150-page mark, and I was left dumbfounded. I felt truly betrayed by the inorganic change in character happening halfway through. I had spent so much time with this book, singing its praises, only to have this abrupt tomfoolery wherein the most moral character had everything immoral thrown her way. I’m still in a state of shock. It came to the point where I had to point the book cover face down on my nightstand, till its fast return to the library the following day, because I couldn’t bear to look at it without some semblance of anger flaring up inside me. It felt like two completely different stories were being told: One of genuine storytelling, using many sharp observations about family life, and telling a truthful tale of girlhood. And the other is focused on tearing down what we build up for the past 100 pages. Like, when Mia starts being the moral compass for Lorrie Ann that’s when you know something fishy is going down in the storytelling.

This unnatural change of pace made me feel beyond exasperated. It’s all that I had been warned about on immorality was shown with a turn of a page. W H Y ??? I’ll just say one thing: Those questioning the system of justice while claiming that ridding a child of its life because of a disability are exactly those that the system exists for. I mean:

“Zach’s suffering is not more than a child’s in the Congo just because we are genetically related.”

How is one supposed to react calmly to reading such utter BS? She’s talking so coldly about her own son, and I’m wondering how this is the same person from the start of this book. I cannot stand when good characters are destroyed this way. This felt like an amateurish and insensitive dissection on a character’s life.

I just don’t have the patience anymore to deal with such crude remarks being made for n, such as comparing genocides and reducing both in the process of doing so.

Cue my search for a new favorite book to calm my storming rage.

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The Hype is Right: Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (Book Spoilery Review)

November 7, 2018November 9, 2018 bookspoilsLeave a comment

Of the million reasons I don’t want to go to Antarctica, the main one is that it will require me to leave the house.”

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Flipping through five pages of praise to get to the actual storyline of Where’d You Go, Bernadette was a telling sign. Plus: the book is set in the month of November when it starts, which is the current month, and reading something that’s set in the same period of time is only a bonus that works in my favor, same as I mentioned back in my review for The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel (set in June, read in June).

When they say this book is made up of emails and letters, they’re not kidding. The whole first half of this book uses anything and everything, except standard chapters, to tell the story of the Branch family (consisting of 15-year-old Bee and her parents Bernadette Fox and Elgie) and the people in their orbit. We have transcripts taken from FBI documents, emails, articles, handwritten notes, an extravagant and detailed emergency room bill, and all the gossip-filled correspondences from Galer Street. In short: It’s a hoot to read through.

The longer overview:

I’ve been in the mood for a book that resembles Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere ever since I completed it about a year ago, so the premise of Where’d You Go, Bernadette exploring the rich white neighborhood of Galer Street, but also introducing complex components that have us in this love-to-hate relationship with certain characters (*ahem* Aubrey) had me intrigued.
I have to grant it to Bernadette, though, for first catching my attention with this spiel on the overpowering energy it requires to simply be with people:

“The only way to get to Antarctica is by cruise ship. Even the smallest one has 150 passengers, which translates into me being trapped with 149 other people who will uniquely annoy the hell out of me with their rudeness, waste, idiotic questions, incessant yammering, creepy food requests, boring small talk, etc. Or worse, they might turn their curiosity toward me, and expect pleasantry in return. I’m getting a panic attack just thinking about it. A little social anxiety never hurt anyone, am I right?”

All the praise was raving about how hilarious this book was, so I kept an eye out for some uproarious laughter to consume me only to realize that Where’d You Go, Bernadette doesn’t feature that in-your-face outrageous humor but rather the everyday kind where you’re talking and just are on the same wavelength of humor when talking and sharing. It’s so nice to see it play out on the page.

“See, I never thought through the actual implication of you applying to boarding schools. I.e., that you’d be leaving us. But really, it’s fine with me if you run off. I’ll still see you every day.”
I glowered at her.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” she said. “I’m going to move to Wallingford and rent a house off campus. I already got a job working in the Choate dining hall.”
“Don’t even joke,” I said.”

This right here made a smile creep up on my face because it’s Bernadette’s only upper hand as a mother to a teen. It’s the good-humored kind of family jokes where you just know each other well enough to know what ticks them off and what doesn’t.

The kind of humor that makes you feel good, not at the cost of someone, unless, of course, we’re talking about… Dun Dun Duuuuun:

Audrey Griffin aka “call-the-manager” type of person:

Honesty, the skill it takes to somehow turn the events around so that everyone but her is at blame is astonishing. You do not want to be in her favor. Or ever owe her anything ever. A great example of this are her letters to the director of Gaylor Street School, Gwen Goodyear:

“Speaking of Warren, he’s looking into the legality of letting a student who’s a known drug abuser finish out the semester. Isn’t that a threat to the other students? I’m asking out of curiosity.
If you’re so hell-bent on placing blame, I suggest you look in the mirror.”

Bam. Her letters to fallible Gwen Goodyear were always a ruckus. She emits that passive-aggressiveness that’s more like aggressive-aggressiveness, and it’s something else to experience from the sidelines.

Also, her accomplice Soo-Lin who’s a known homewrecker (TIME-OUT REALITY CHECK: honestly, I’m perplexed as to what good she thought would come out of chasing after a married man????) (the married man in question is a cheat, as well, for trying to neatly pack up his wife, instead of questioning what’s going on and actually communicate his thoughts to her.) So I wasn’t mad at Audrey for handling Soo-Lin some dose of aggressive-aggressiveness;

“How’s this for irony? Remember when you were divorcing Barry, and Warren handled the whole thing for you gratis, saving you thirty thousand dollars? Remember when you literally sobbed in gratitude, promising you’d make it up to us? Here’s your chance! I’ll let myself in with the key under the cupid.
One question. What do you want for dinner? I’m going to have a feast waiting when you get home.
Blessings, you!”

As well as, Bernadette getting to take her own jab at Soo-Lin’s expense: “FOX: You’re a Seattle-born secretary and you have no place in this house!”

You do not get to wreck a home and expect to go by unscathed. You do not mess up someone’s marriage just because they’re unhappy in it. That is nowhere your place to intervene. I received some closure when Soo-Lin had her moment of realization, alas a tad too late.

Surprisingly, Audrey Griffin grew to have the most the most character development, but the writing didn’t demonstrate it thoroughly with the constant skimming over her life. I wanted to hear more on Audrey and her son, Kyle, getting better. Kyle is a jackass with his antics, but he’s on the road to redemption with his unrelating, force-of-nature mother by his side.

One of those antics relate to Bee:

“(We weren’t allowed to wait in the office ever since Kyle Griffin was sent there one day, and when nobody was looking he went through the Galer Street directory and started calling all the parents from the main office number. So when the parents looked at their cell phones, it said there was an incoming call from Galer Street. They’d answer, and Kyle screamed, “There’s been an accident!” and hung up. From then on, all the kids had to wait outside.)”

The praise for this book also mentioned how it’s full of emails and letters, so I assumed they were interspersed throughout the chapters, but nope, they mean what they say. Where’d You Go, Bernadette starts with the Branch family then veers off into different characters orbiting them by sneaking into their personal exchanges and interaction. It makes for a particularly entertaining epistolary format, similar perhaps to Illuminae in a contemporary setting. I love dialogue-driven stories so transcript and emails are my favorite things to speed through a book.
I was surprised to find that it was solely told in that medium until the investigation concerning Bernadette’s whereabouts reaches a dead-end, and we return to the usual chapter format. So the characters get to comment on the first half of the book, aka the bunch of concentrated files, and they get to say what we’d been thinking throughout.

“You were a real rock star, Dad, walking down the aisle of the Microsoft Connector.”
“I didn’t write that!”
“Your girlfriend did!”

However, I feel like so much of this book focused on the action of getting to Antarctica and reconnecting the clues on Bernadette’s whereabouts (when in reality it’s just a major case of miscommunication) that we kind of missed expanding on the character-driven aspect of this story. I mean, the main conflict of the book is in the title, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, but it’s about so much more than piecing together clues. It’s about family and owning up to your mistakes and coming of age and mother-daughter connections. The last one I had the most joy uncovering.

“I was going through an Abbey Road phase because I had just read a book about the last days of the Beatles, and I spent most of breakfast telling Mom about it.”

I wanted more moment like this that show how supportive and close Bee and Bernadette are… like with their mutual love for Cliff Mass, the weather boy *echo of wouldn’t you like to know weather-boy* who likes to uses fancy words and long-winded sentences to essentially say it’s just raining.

Oh my God, can someone please stop me before I write more about Cliff Mass?”

These revealing moments I found to be missing in the whirlwind to keep up with the plot. Details help me fall into a story and the characters, as it was written so wisely in Mitch Albom’s For One More Day: Details were something to grab on to, a way to insert myself into the story.

Going back to the start, Bernadette’s vulnerability when Bee was born struck a chord.

“Here’s what inconsolable looks like: me sitting in my car in the parking lot of Children’s Hospital, all the windows rolled up, wearing my hospital gown, twelve inches of pads between my legs and Elgie’s parka over my shoulders, Elgie standing outside in the dark, trying to make me out through fogged windows. I was all torture and adrenaline. I had no thoughts, no emotions. Inside me roiled something so terrible that God knew he had to keep my baby alive, or this torrent within me would be unleashed on the universe.”

She needed some sunshine after the big dark cloud that had been following her for years. And it came in the form of her daughter Bee.

“Was I really so bad that I deserved to have three years of my life destroyed for some rich prick’s practical joke? So I had some cars towed, yes. I made a gate out of trash doorknobs. I’m an artist. I won a MacArthur grant, for fuck’s sake. Don’t I get a break? I’ll be watching TV and see Nigel Mills-Murray’s name at the end. I’ll go nuts inside. He gets to keep creating, and I’m the one who’s still in pieces?”

I wanted to delve deeply into moments like these that came to shape the family.

Lastly, Elgie Branch does not deserve Bernadette in this universe or any alternate creation. Their relationship was another aspect that wasn’t expanded on, so I had nothing to hold on as to why these two even got together in the first place to start a family. So Elgie and his brash decision making can jump into infinity and beyond.

“You look for horses,” I said. “While you spent your whole life at work, me and Mom were having the best, funnest time ever. Mom and I lived for each other. She wouldn’t do anything close to getting drunk and walking next to a ship’s balcony because it would mean she might never see me again. That you think she would shows how little you know her. You look for horses, Dad.”

Bee knows Bernadette; you don’t.

Thank you for coming to my #4-most-watched TEDTalk of all time.

“From: Audrey Griffin
To: Soo-Lin Lee-Segal
I don’t give a fig about Ted. I don’t know who he is and I don’t care what he says during this talk you refuse to shut up about.”

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Thirsty Romance Review: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

September 23, 2018October 7, 2018 bookspoilsLeave a comment

“The Hating Game. You versus me. It’s the only way this can possibly end.”

During my recent, habitual task of roaming my local library shelves, I landed eagle-eyed on The Hating Game, which I’ve heard nothing but praise for in the last year. It didn’t need any further coaxing to check it out. And damn, this is one hot summer book; I’m glad I read it at the high-end of the hot season dying down.

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I know I’m low-key excited when I read the praise at the start of the book. Valerie Frankel’s “stole my life for two days” seemed promising, in particular.

NEMESIS (n)

1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome
2) A person’s undoing
3) Joshua Templeman

Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office. She prides herself on being loved by everyone at work – except for imposing, impeccably attired Joshua Templeman.

Trapped in a shared office, they’ve become entrenched in an addictive, never-ending game of one-upmanship. There’s the Staring Game, The Mirror Game, The HR Game. Lucy can’t let Joshua beat her at anything – especially when a huge promotion is on offer.

If Lucy wins, she’ll be Joshua’s boss. If she loses, she’ll resign. So why is she questioning herself? Maybe she doesn’t hate him. And just maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game . . .

I sank into a more comfortable reading position as soon as this book got a good laugh out of me with the line:

“He doesn’t acknowledge me for a full minute. His keystrokes intensify. Beethoven on a piano has nothing on him right now.”

This seemed promising within a heartbeat at that.

Honestly, Lucy and Joshua’s whole office teasing/hating vibe had me in fits when I made the comparison in my head with Jim and Dwight from The Office.

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The Hating Game could’ve used the office angst between Lucy & Joshua to pull together some grandiose pranks, and yet… we get some mentions of HR reported pranks, but zero details of what they contained. To be honest, I never quite determined who’s who: Our Dwight fluctuates between Joshua Templeman, Assistant (To The) co-CEO, and Lucy Hutton, Executive Assistant (To The) co-CEO.

They’re so aware of one another and I’m here wondering how can you hate someone you’re so obsessed with? They’ve memorized the other’s shirt colors, moods, patterns of behavior; They’re on each other’s case every single moment. Their world orbits around the other.

Case in point:

The main reason why they seem to hate each other’s guts comes across pretty clear upon the flashback to their first time meeting. Lucy feels like she has to hate him because the other option is too daunting, especially if she feels it’s unrequited. Neither of them would’ve remained neutral about the other.

“Please, I beg myself. Please hate Josh again. This is too hard.”

Again, if a book can get me laughing, I’m all in:

“When I finally work out how to decode the pencil marks, I slap my forehead. I can’t believe I’ve been so slow.
“Thanks. I’ve been dying to do that all afternoon,” Joshua says without taking his eyes from his monitor.”

This is such a subtle but humorous moment.

If I thought the elevator scene was hot (which it surely was; Grey’s Anatomy is quaking), I had a big storm waiting with chapter sixteen; I’m still fanning myself. And to think they started, thanks to the enticing storytelling skills of her “esoteric” dream. I had to keep all windows wide open for that necessary breeze for the rollercoaster of a ride that is chapter sixteen.

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Lucy investigating every nook and cranny (why does this sound like innuendo?) in Joshua’s apartment in the same chapter was oddly reminiscent of an episode in season three of The Office (“Cocktails”) where the characters attend a cocktail party at a glamorous house, and Dwight’s running around, similar to Lucy, to inspect everything:

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This is literally Lucy with Joshua’s heavenly couch:

“Where’d you get this couch? I want to get the same one.”
“It’s the only one on earth.” His dry voice floats out from the kitchen.
“Can I buy it from you?”
“No.”
“What about this ribbon cushion?”
“One of a kind.”

Speaking of the show, I have to say that before starting this book I thought all the games mentioned on the back cover meant this would be like earlier into season three, where Jim Halpert fails miserably at playing Call of Duty with the Stamford branch. Like, what if Jim had fallen for Karen Filippelli while playing Call of Duty at work. But turns out that the Staring Game, the HR Game (which is the equivalent of Dwight yelling “MICHAEL”), or the Hating Game are just ways Lucy and Joshua interact.

I wasn’t really that invested in the characters outside of their relationship, though, meaning that I hadn’t bothered to think beyond their personal selves, which is why the few surprise curveballs thrown my way managed to shake me up. I just wish we wouldn’t dwell so much on family drama, especially something as big as attending a wedding half filled with Templemans, if we haven’t even interacted with the family members in question prior to it. Also: the trope of the girlfriend getting involved in family drama and solving it all in one scene is eye-roll worthy. If I pick up a romance book it’s pretty obvious I’m not here for all the family interactions.
With romances I either hate them or l feel neutral towards the story. I tried my hand earlier this year with The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang and found myself tired out by the sex scenes and just craved going back to that blissful state of drawn-out kisses with intimate yet deliberate hand touches.
So I was beyond loving this book for not granting the big s e x scene right away and make the two work for it. Like, as much as the characters were frustrated to part away, it was so worth it in the long run. I usually lose my momentum within the story once that first big scene ends because the thrill of the chase lost and everything turns quite repetitive. So it was beyond gratifying to see The Hating Game laser focus on its spellbinding, pages-long kisses, which were deliciously slow in their attentive nature to tiny details.
Kitchen scenes where Joshua’s preparing food and Lucy feels so at home with him that she just leans into him at every opportunity GOT TO ME.

“Don’t line my replacement up too quick. You’ll hurt my feelings.”
The reminder of the likely outcome of this entire scenario makes me decide to lean against him. The middle of his back is the most perfectly ergonomic place to hide my face.”

All bubbling and soft feelings evoked.

When you spent so much of your time pining after someone, knowingly or unknowingly, the high of getting together is intoxicating. The number of times Lucy goes to say she addicted to Joshua made my mind play Britney Spears’ Toxic in the background.

All in all: the hype for The Hating Game was worth it for the majority, even if family feuds came to intervene at the very end. Honestly, it was worth it all for chapter sixteen.

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