Author:

2007, Mira

Filed Under: Horror, Romance, Chick Lit, Thrillers, Young Adult

I’m not sure I can say that I liked Stray. I wouldn’t read it again and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else (unless they were a werecat enthusiast, in which case I’m sure it would come to mind, and I would bring it up, and I would say, check this shit out). But I did read it in one week. Which says something.

First, a few fun facts about werecats:

1. Werecats have this amazing sense of smell. Lines including descriptions such as: “my citrus-scented pants” and “wholesome femininity layered with Herbal Essences and cherry Bubble Yum” really clue the reader in.  Over and over and over again
2. Werecats do not have nine lives. As the protagonist puts it, “that would be cool, though.” Maybe her werebabies will have that gene?
3. Good werecats don’t eat human flesh. Bad “strays” do.

Did I mention that I trash-picked this book from the trash? Yep. Found this gem on the side of the road. Look at the cover: You would have picked it up, too. There’s a sex kitten right on the cover and you wonder, is that a tattoo on her lower back, or a scratch mark?

I’m not always a fast reader. Sometimes I forget my book at home and end up spending the day with the Metro. Or I switch around, hopping from story to story.

One week says something. It says that I opted to read about werecat love triangles when I could have been out at the bar or catching up on my new favorite British teen drama, “Skins” or, you know, going to the library for a better book. It says that I remembered to bring it with me to work everyday so that I could read it on the train and on the elliptical machine at the gym. It says that I maybe hunted around my room for it late one night when it was hiding under my blankets and I really wanted to know whether or not the protagonist was going to be raped by the bad guy.

Was there a lot of character development? Not really.

There’s the main girl – you know the one. You want to be her when you grow up because she’s super tough, and clever, and all the mistakes she makes are adorable. Her name is Faith, but spelled, awkwardly, as “Faythe”. While the book is written from Faythe’s perspective, the reader never really knows what she’s going to do next. All this insight into her mind and still you’re surprised when she suddenly goes from hating her home life to leading the pack.

She also dresses like an uber-slut, but this is not exactly because she’s a whore. It’s because werecats are so used to seeing other werecats naked that halter tops are actually sexier to their kind than straight up nudity.

Faythe’s intelligence is illustrated in several scenes, but her depth is best summed up in the following passage:

Time was the great constant, eternally measuring my life in the ticks of a hundred second hands, the tocks of a thousand pendulums. It portioned my life into good times and bad times, the former too short, and the latter too long.

Other than the main girl, there are several guys she fucks/wants to fuck:  her college boyfriend, her high school sweetheart, this sexy guy named Jace. Plus the bad foreign guys (who are mostly “strays,” or cats that are not born into the weredom). Along with the were-boys, there are about a dozen family members and an even more extended werecat network (in wereworld, they refer to these extended pods as “Prides”). I got a little lost trying to keep track of who belonged to what family, but I did scan the pages trying to figure out who Faythe would finally choose to love.

Even with Faythe’s indecision regarding her next boyfriend, Stray is predictable. I mean, it’s a book about a mythological creature living among us and trying to save her people from the evil plans of similar creatures who are not as pure bred or morally strident. Guess what happens? Despite the predictability, it’s an entertaining, light read. It’s also a great for people who are interested in reading about things like disembowelment, intestines, and throat-ripping.

And there are moments in the book where some of the lines make no sense. For instance, someone, anyone, please explain the following excerpt to me:

Our eyes met. I have no idea what mine looked like, but his would have comfortably seated several little green men apiece.

I’m sure this book has spawned a series. The author left the ending nice and open for a sequel, or a prequel, or an entire series of similar ejaculations if she should chooses. However, unlike the Harry Potter books or the Twilight series, I don’t feel compelled to immediately go out and buy the next book. Because I don’t care what happens to Faythe next. Even worse, I bet a second book would follow the same plot lines and love choices. Yawn.

But then again, if I see it in another recycling bin outside, I’ll grab that shit right up.

Similar (But Better) Reads: The Twilight Saga (Meyer) & the Sookie Stackhouse series (Harris). For worse: http://paranormalromanceblog.com (“a harelquin romance blog devoted to paranormal love”).

Author: Charlotte Roche, translated from the German by Tim Mohr

2009, Grove Press

Filed under Literary, Chick Lit

Be warned, this book is rife with graphic language and the descriptions are often quite prurient, sexually, scatalogically, and otherwise. I won’t really be able to quote or fully express what exactly Roche discusses in this novel without the review being flagged NSFW. That said, this is an excellent novel, and the explicit writing certainly lends itself to that. You’ll see above that I’ve added “Chick Lit” as one of the labels. That’s a borderline definition. I feel it is fair to an extent (although I, personally, tend to regard chick lit as the antithesis to literary novels). It is, especially the first half, a novel very much concerned with the intimate details of women, particularly their relationships to their own bodies. But there is no name dropping of fashion accessories or anything silly like that, and this is undeniably an intelligent and emotionally complex book.

It is also a sad book deep down. Helen is a hurt young woman, both emotionally and physically. The entire novel occurs in a hospital, where Helen is recovering from a hemorrhoidectomy.  Helen is an 18 year-old student whose life has seen far too much freedom and experienced far too much sex (not quite to the point of deviance, but close). And this is how we meet Helen: through her own assertions and admissions of her sexuality and physicality. She needed the surgery because she tore her anus during anal sex, which she describes vividly, as she does everything else. The word “pussy” appears on nearly every page of the book.

But as Helen becomes more comfortable with her reader, she slowly reveals her sad emotional story. Her relationship to her family is strained to say the least.  We learn her mother tried to commit suicide by asphyxiation, and attempted to bring Helen’s younger brother with. This split the family and essentially left Helen without parents, certainly without supervision. And the duplicity this creates in Helen is quite well rendered by Roche. Helen is at once a physically mature, if promiscuous woman, and a confused and lonely child.

Perhaps the most touching aspect of how this manifests is  also her most vulnerable secret: her avocados. Helen had herself sterilized the moment she was of age. Her only hobby, besides various sex acts (and really, they get pretty wild) is raising avocados, which, as she explains it, is a careful and time consuming–measured in years–process. And she supplants her motherly urges by raising the pits. She even inserts them inside herself and “births” them. Again, Roche builds Helen’s layers expertly, deftly amalgamating in the character a woman with an irreparable schism between sexuality and biology and a young girl mothering an inanimate object.

Helen gets it in her head that the longer she can stay in the hospital, the more likely the chances she can get her parents into the same room. And thus the more likely her family can be repaired. The futility of such logic tugs at you a bit, especially coming from such a damaged creature. Eventually Helen decides to reopen her wound in order to extend her stay. I won’t spoil how, but it was one of the hardest to read scenes I’ve ever read. Right up there with the incestual public bath scene in A. M. Homes’s The End of Alice.

So yeah, the language and topics can be explicit, and indeed I cringed at times. But it also can be quite funny, and while the language doesn’t hold back, it is not explicit to the point of vulgarity or gratuity. Too often, such language in books is scowled at, referred to “crutch words” or unliterary. While that is true often, it is not so always. Helen’s wide-open and candid sexuality and her ability to articulate it in the narration play a perfect foil to her walled-off emotional self. Wetlands would not be nearly as good without it, and she really is quite a wonderful character in a wonderful book.

Similar reads: The End of Alice (Homes), Platform (Houellebecq), The Lost Daughter (Ferrante), The Company of Ghosts (Salvayre)

Author: Paula Froelich

Atria, 2009

Best ebook deal: Sony’s eBook Store or Barnes & Noble

Filed under: Chick Lit

In her first novel, Mercury in Retrograde, Paula Froelich channels a less refined Plum Sykes or a less witty Candace Bushnell—and true to her previous gig as The New York Post’s Page Six gossip editor, her fictional attempt harnesses tidbits of New York society that only a gossip columnist could wrap her charms around.

The tale begins with the disclaimer “When Mercury is in retrograde, anything bad that can happen will.” One character’s name, not so cleverly, is Penelope Mercury, but she is no more a focus of the story than the other two main characters: Lena Lippencrass and Dana Gluck. Froelich superficially meanders through their not-so-charmed lives: Mercury is a down on her luck 27-year-old roving reporter who is gunning for a promotion but instead gets canned; Dana is a 30-something workaholic lawyer who has cloistered herself within the confines of her apartment since her husband left her for a Victoria’s Secret model; and Lena (referred to throughout most of the book as “Lipstick” due to an unfortunate lipstick-related car crash) is a 27-year-old socialite working for a renowned fashion magazine and living a glamorous life until her parents decide to cut her off.

I found that once each character’s plight is successfully divulged the story tends to be formulaic in that it follows a well-trodden “down on their luck” story arc: New York women of a certain age overcome all obstacles, miraculously and effortlessly achieve their own Happily Ever After.

Despite their completely different backgrounds, the three women, living in the same rent-stabilized building in Soho, form a close bond—having been brought together by a mutual friend and a yoga teacher. They begin a twice weekly yoga session hosted in Dana’s penthouse unit during which they share the lurid details of their unfortunate pasts and frustrating presents. Their support for each other is unconditional and inspiring. However, their sisterhood is tangential and unrelated to the growth and good fortune that comes to each of them―harried, and wrapped in a neat little bow―in the last ten pages of the story.

Without giving too much away, I will say that each woman comes out of their difficult situations unscathed and the potential of what may come next is intriguing. Perhaps this was Froelich’s attempt at keeping the door open for a sequel?

While I may sound a bit dubious as to the quality or my enjoyment of the book, I am not. Paula Froelich is no John Steinbeck and I would not even rank her among Marian Keyes or Sophie Kinsella—other female authors in the ever expanding genre of witty chick lit. However, the book is exactly what it portends to be: a breezy beach read that completely consumes you. If you are at all plugged in to the New York fashion and social scene, you will easily pick up on allusions to designers and fallen members of New York’s elite.

Despite its lack of intellectual vigor, it truly left me wanting more. Considering that Froelich left her cushy job at the New York Post to pursue her burgeoning career as an author, hopefully everyone else will want more, too!

Similar books: The Devil Wears Prada, by Laura Weisberger; Bergdorf Blondes, by Plum Sykes