C2Comics Blog

While in graduate school, more than one lunch break was spent running down the busy New Brunswick streets to the post office, sandwich from the cafeteria in one hand, cell phone in the other, trying to mail a package, eat my lunch, and schedule a dentist’s appointment without going over my half-hour lunch break.  I was so frazzled at one point that I asked a friend to be my wife.  I was only half-kidding.  Maybe less-than-half-kidding.  So when I came across Annie Sanders’ Book, “Busy Woman Seeks Wife” and saw (from the book summary on back) that it was about a working woman who, with no time to do her own laundry or cooking, advertises for a “wife” I thought the premise sounded delightful and purchased it straight away.

This was my first time reading Annie Sanders and it turns out, according to the “About the Author”, Annie Sanders is actually more than one person!  Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders (AS from now on) began writing books after they met while pregnant.  It is mentioned in this section that “you have to know someone well to be able to say that at times her prose sucks and her plotting is slack”.  Reading this made my mouth fall open as I thought:

“At times?”

Busy Woman Seeks Competent Authors, more like

I read “Busy Woman….” straight through, in about six hours.  I couldn’t put it down!  But this is not because it was such an engaging read, but rather, I am in the habit of finishing what I start, and if I put this book down, I know there was no way in hell I would pick it up again.  Well, to be honest, there was another reason I kept reading – I kept expecting the story to pick up on the next page.  I am not sure why I thought that, but it almost never did.  Oh, there were a few high points, to be sure, but the high points of this book are only that in self-comparison.  Even the few well-written portions of this novel are simply that – well written.  This makes them stand out against the “sucky prose” and “slack plotting” (to paraphase) that is the majority of the book.

The real hindrance to “Busy Woman….” is that there are no real characters.  Oh, there are names, and they represent people in the book that do things, but because everyone in the book is glaringly one-dimensional, you really don’t need to read how a “character” will act in a certain situation, because you already know how the stereotype will react.  This does not prevent AS from laying out that stereotypical reaction in excruciatingly boring detail.

Details are another drawback of this book, in that there are too many of them that don’t have to do with the actual plot, and those that would help are noticeably absent.  When Alex goes shopping we get a complete list of what was bought and when Frankie gets mail we learn of every piece of mail received, despite it having absolutely no relevance to the story.  Alex’s house, however, could do with a little detail, as it is described both as having a guest bedroom and also being tiny.  Now, this could be a culture difference (the story is set in London) but houses/apartments that have two bedroom are usually, by their nature not “tiny”.  Did the guest bedroom used to be a utility closet?  That is a detail I would like to have been told, if only to reconcile the two contradictory descriptions.

Now what woman wouldn't want a figure like these beans'?!

Common sense, too, seems to be lacking in this book.  Alex’s mother is called “The Bean”, due to her figure. Now, reading this I pictured her as rather round and squat, like, well, a Bean.  Almost a hundred pages later it is revealed that she is quite tall and slender.  Maybe this would make her a beanpod or beanstalk, but certainly not just a bean.  It is conceivable that “Beanstalk” was shortened to simply “Bean”, as the latter is easier to say and projects a cuter image, however, this was not mentioned, and for a good portion of the book it creates an incorrect character image.  While on the topic of appearances… at one point Alex wishes she had her mother’s delicate frame, as opposed to her father’s athletic one.  While this might seem like a reasonable request, it must be noted that Alex love sports and athletics, so essentially she is wishing for a body type that would make it more difficult to do what she loves, and that is just silly to me.  Also silly to me was, forgive me, one paragraph that sticks in my mind – let me set the stage….Frankie has just come home after an audition, and his sister, Ella, is in the apartment, Frankie then…

“…looked around in disbelief.  How had she managed to make so much mess in so little time?  He’d left that work surface immaculate before he’s left – now it was ringed with sticky brown coffee residue and slopped with hastily poured milk”

This occurs on page twenty-one, and sets the tone for what we’re in store for.  When a couple coffee rings and sploshed milk is considered a huge mess that normally takes a considerable amount of time to create, well…..

But silliest of all is the “plot” of the book.  Is it the main plot?  A side plot?  I’m not sure – all are equally bland!  However, since the denouement occurs after this plot’s climax, I assume it is the major one.  I will try to keep this spoiler-free in case anyone still wants to read it.  In a nutshell, Alex, the busy woman, is trying to set up a launch party for a new line of athletic apparel.  It becomes clear (quite early on) that someone is sabotaging her work. It is glaringly obvious who the culprit is, but the main characters are, as previously stated, one-dimensional, and no character turns up on the “intelligent” facet, so we must slog through at their pace.

I have to say, this was probably the most enjoyable portion of the book for me – although glaringly obvious who it was, it was not obvious what the motivation was.  Due to my hopes being highest, this was also the biggest let-down, as the motivation was to win Alex’s job.  Considering this would be like a janitor sabotaging the school principal in order to win the job, finding out this was the motivation was just, well, lame.

Alex’s money-troubles, brought up at the end of the book, were also confusing.  Throughout the majority of the book she is paying someone to be a “wife” (which has the price tag, the authors guess, at $1000.00/day, a figure which I am honestly inclined to agree with considering the work – cleaning, cooking, chauffeuring, shopping, caring for a relative, etc.).  This spans several weeks’ time, and in the last few chapters it is revealed that she has money troubles.  These two facts (just like a tiny flat with a guest bedroom) just don’t mesh well.  Likely AS, realizing the lack of characterization of Alex, decided to throw in the money troubles off-hand to provide another measure of empathy towards her from Frankie (the “wife” and love interest).

Since the poor characterization bugged me so much, I have more detail on the actual “characters” after the cut, but in summary, this book was a waste of time and money.  It was an interesting concept, but poorly executed, and leaves me to wonder how this crap even got published, as it is not even as titillating as your dollar-store romance novel.  When flanked by “Idiot America” (by Charlie Pierce) and “QED” (by Richard Feynman), I fully expected this to be the fluff portion of my June reading, a slice of chocolate cake, if you will, to the rice and vegetables. But just as I expect my chocolate cake to be edible despite the lack of nutrition, I expect my fluff reading to be decent literature, despite a lack of great mental exercise.

All in all, the authors sum it up best themselves with “prose that sucks and plotting that is slack”. Read more »

Actually, I don’t think they are, but it is hard keeping them!  How is that “posting every week” thing going, huh? HUH?

With the vague description of “read more” I think I actually did hit the resolution set for April, in that I did actually open a book!  And do books on cd count?  Magazines?  Comics?  Airplane departure schedules?

The actual book I read was one I picked up a while ago – “Fair Game” by Valerie Plame-Wilson.  Actually, I haven’t read all of it.  I think I got about 8 chapters in before I put it down in disgust.  I had expected more intrigue, but this is obviously a woman who sees herself as the best and the brightest.  She was top of her class, she got best marks, this was awesome, that was awesome, it gets to be kind of dull.  To be fair to Valerie, this is a short-coming of almost every autobiography, not just hers.  Either the author is super-cool and the best at what they do, or their life is miserable.  I suppose this is why I don’t read a lot of autobiographies, the view cannot help by be biased.

Valerie Plame-Wilson’s book is not helped by the paragraphs of text that are blocked out.  As an employee of the CIA, all manuscripts need to be proofread by someone at the CIA first, to protect classified information.  At least once a page, and sometimes for page after page, Valerie wrote about information deemed classified.  Interestingly enough, most of this information had been released to the public through other avenues and there is a post-script filling in all the missing information.  This strange set-up was, in fact, part of the allure of the book.  However, some things are better in theory than in practice.  It ended up making the book seem incredibly disjointed, but it also makes you realize how much your brain craves details.  At one point in the book, she discusses meeting with a man from _______.  And he does certain things, the way a _______ man does, and is a stereotypical ________ man.  And instead of focusing on the actual book, you are just thinking to yourself, “where the hell is this guy from?  Why won’t the CIA just let me know what ________ is?!”

So that book has been shelved.  There is still some part of me that feels that I should finish it, but I think that is the generous side of myself which is decreasing with age.  As I become older, I realize that, in the words of Jerry Holkins, “my time is not free.  I have an hourly billable rate”.  Perhaps it is a cynical way of looking at things, but if I am more than a quarter of the way through something and it has still failed to grip me, it has failed to do its job.