Backstory: This memoir was recommended to me by a loyal blog reader and good friend.  She’s a bit of an Anglophile, so I immediately knew why this book appealed to her.  She’s also a smart girl with great taste, though, so I figured I was in for a fun read. 

One-Sentence Plot Summary: Stuck in Colorado with her hippie parents, Jerramy Fine has fantasized about being a real princess for as long as she can remember, and she works her way to England to try to make her dream come true–kissing the requisite number of frogs along the way.

Review: This book is both hilarious and ridiculous.  Fine begins her memoir by her discovery at age six of Peter Mark Andrew Phillips, a member of the Windsor family about her age, whom she proceeds to fixate on for the next 300 pages and 20-odd years of her life.  Every life move is designed to get her closer to her goal, from her choice of college, to her study abroad program, and her eventual (inevitable) relocation to England.  Reading the book takes a certain amount of acceptance.  When I first started reading, I wanted to find this girl, shake her, and yell, “SERIOUSLY????  You need a mental health evaluation!”  But if you can get over that and approach the story with a light heart and an open mind, you’ll be thoroughly entertained by Fine’s attempts to weasel her way into the upper echelons of British society.  Her writing is clever and readable; you’ll get sucked in quickly. 

The only significant problem with this book is perhaps an inherent problem with memoirs: life is messy.  What I mean is that a novel imbues every moment with significance and is able to resolve situations with a neat bow where appropriate and leave dramatic cliffhangers in other moments.  A memoir is necessarily limited, however, by what actually happened, and sometimes things don’t work out the way a reader, or author, would wish.  So there were several key moments in the book when I thought, “Aha!  Things are coming together,” only to have them unravel again.  But when I reminded myself of the genre, it actually made Fine far more relatable than the fictional heroines for whom everything works out perfectly.  On a more minor note, the numerous footnotes, most of which contained fairly obvious information, were annoying, though largely ignorable.

Conclusion: An amusing (if slightly odd) quick read.  It must be said, though; it’s the rare man who would appreciate it.

Available at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell’s.  Also available in Sony eBook and Kindle formats.

NB: You can find out more about the book and author at Fine’s blog.

One-Sentence Plot Summary: 36-year-old Prudence Whistler, fired from her job and dumped by her boyfriend, begins to re-evaluate her life after seeing a woman who has everything Pru thought she’d have by this point. 

Review: In some ways, this is the classic chick lit novel.  Pru’s primary longing is for a husband and a family; though concerned about losing her job, she has no real passion for it.  The romantic target is readily apparent, and the novel ends predictably. 

However, Flowers’ novel is elevated somewhat by her portrayal of Pru’s family.  Her sister, Patsy, provides a nice foil to Pru.  Where Pru is practical and even a little cold, Patsy is impetuous and passionate.  The two sisters are united, though, by their love for Patsy’s two-year-old daughter, Annali.  Pru’s relationship with them provides the real emotional heart of the novel. 

By contrast, Pru’s relationship with her primary romantic interest, John, feels a little flat.  Pru interacts with so many characters–her sister, her sister’s ex-boyfriend and current boyfriend, her niece, her mother, her gay best friend McKay and his partner, Bill, her friends Fiona and Kate–that John seems to suffer from a lack of screen time.   The interactions between Pru and John are well-written, but it’s easy to forget him while Flowers focuses on the other aspects of Pru’s life.  And as the novel approaches resolution, Flowers chooses to relate most exchanges between Pru and John through Patsy or McKay, which decreases the romantic tension.

To Flowers’ credit, though, the inevitable conflict that arises between John and Pru isn’t artificial or contrived.  There’s no dramatic accident or misunderstanding; the conflict is internal and feels very genuine.  This is also true of the difficulties that Patsy has with her romantic interests in the novel.  In both cases, the problems are realistic and complex.

Flowers has also created multidimensional secondary characters.  McKay isn’t the stereotypical bitchy queen or cutesy sidekick version of a gay best friend.  And Fiona isn’t a cookie-cutter mother figure, which is made clear when she reveals her true feelings about being pregnant again to Pru.

The downside of this complexity, however, seems to be a lack of humor.  The novel as a whole is serious, even a little melancholy.  I didn’t laugh once, which is odd for a novel that, despite its virtues, still feels like a light read. 

Conclusion: Though this book isn’t destined for the literary canon, it’s an enjoyable (if not humorous) story that goes a little deeper than other novels that begin with similar premises, situating the novel in the upper echelon of its genre.

Available at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell’s.  Also available in Sony eBook Reader and Kindle formats.

One-Sentence Plot Summary:Penny, an angsty thirteen-year-old annoyed by her mother’s preoccupation with the fictional heroines who visit their inn, encounters a hero from a Celtic story and is put in a mental institution because of it.

Review: The Heroines was extremely disappointing, partially because the summary and promotional blurbs were so misleading.  They made the book sound light-hearted, a fun romp with readers’ favorite heroines.  Instead, the story focused on Penny.  Favorite chooses Penny as the first-person narrator (a serious mistake), and so we spend a significant portion of the book institutionalized with Penny.  This part of the book is reminiscent of The Bell Jar or Girl, Interrupted–books I enjoyed but would never portray as light or charming.

The title clearly implies that the heroines are going to be the focal point of the novel, but for the most part, we only get brief glimpses of these characters.  Generally, they stay in the background, crying over their fictional problems.  Franny Glass is an enjoyable exception, but she is only portrayed more fully because of the influence she has on Penny’s development.

Even if the promotional materials were more accurate, this would still not be an enjoyable read.  The two storylines (Penny and the heroines) pull the novel in opposite thematic directions, ensuring that it isn’t successful at developing either of them.  Penny isn’t a pleasant character to spend so much time with; she is typically childish, selfish, and banal.  Her mother seems incompetent.  And the big reveal at the climax of the novel is absurd.  (I won’t spoil it, in case you decide to read the book even after this review, but let me just say that the fictional character used would never do that.)

Conclusion: It seems as if the publishers knew the book wouldn’t sell as written, so they decided to shift the marketing to attract unsuspecting readers like me.  Steer clear.

Available at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell’s.  Also available in Sony eBook and Kindle formats.