Saturday, September 24, 2005

The Last Year of Being Married--Sarah Tucker

So, if you happened to be a 30-something British travel journalist named Sarah Tucker with a young son and a home in France, would you write a novel about a 30-something British travel journalist named Sarah Giles with a young son and a house in France? Hopefully no, because the whole idea of fiction is that it should not directly mirror your own life. As a reader, that's an automatic mark down in my book, because fiction=not your real life.

Back in the readers' advisory workshop I took there was a discussion of romance novels and one of the things that readers of that genre report is that the #1 thing they are looking for in a protagonist is that she should be smarter than the reader. Humm. This is why this book sucks for me. Because while I may have a broken man picker, I WOULD NEVER MARRY A GUY WHO DOESN'T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH ME. AND THEN, I WOULDN'T STAY WITH HIM FOR ANOTHER 4 YEARS WHICH WOULD MAKE OH, GOD--7 YEARS WITHOUT SEX???????!!!!!!!! No wonder ol' Sarah resulted to some affairs which sure as hell didn't improve the marriage any. Yeah, so the protagonist is passive and in my book, dumb as shit. And then, in the end she's all self-congratulatory about her struggle and her acceptance and moving on to new relationships. Except she's still defining herself in relation to a guy who can make her come. Honey, just buy a vibrator and spend the next 7 years in therapy.

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