Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Mama Mia—A Memoir of Mistakes, Magazines & Motherhood by Mia Freedman.

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It’s no secret that Mia Freedman of Cosmo fame is my idol. She writes fabulously and is super down-to-earth yet eccentric. How do I know this? No, I don’t know her personally (I wish!), but I feel like I do from the way she writes her column and blog posts; so unabashedly open and hilariously true-to-life.

So you can imagine that when her memoir Mama Mia: A Memoir of Mistakes, Magazines & Motherhood came out last year, I was on that bandwagon faster than you can say “drag queen Kylie Minogue” (the theme for the opening chapter).

I loved, loved, LOVED the memoir and read it twice before re-reading it for this post. Some things stuck out in my mind, such as the way she describes blow-drying her hair whilst having contractions (“I took the opportunity to shower and wash my hair and use my travel blow-dryer… this was about as effective as having a small dog pant on my head.”) and packing a Collette Dinnigan dress to wear during the birth of her first child.

I could honestly go on and on about the merits of this memoir and just how fucking brilliant Freedman is as a writer and a woman in general, but instead, I’ve divided them into seven bite-sized reasons-to-read-the-book, replete with a myriad of quotes, to consume at your leisure.

  • She’s not afraid to push boundaries.

I distinctly remember, even though I was thirteen and not yet allowed to read Cosmo, seeing Freedman being interviewed on one of the tabloid news programs after the furore that erupted over her decision to put Big Brother’s Sara-Marie, along with Britney Spears, on a flip-cover edition of Cosmo. This is what she has to say about that:

– “Them: You put Sara-Marie on the back cover because she’s fat, didn’t you? Britney was the real cover because she’s skinny.

Me: “That’s absolutely not true. I won’t pretend my job as an editor is not to sell magazines. Of course it is. But Cosmo is not new to the issue of body image. And this could never be described as a cynical or token gesture. We’re the only women’s magazine to feature women up to size sixteen every single month.”

The book also deals with Freedman’s present-day inner conflict over airbrushing the crap out of the magazines models and celebrities. But she admits that, “Sometimes I did change bodies but only to make them bigger. Oh, and to attach them to different heads.”

  • Our idols are real women, too.

I always put Freedman on a pedestal during her editorship at Cosmo, but it’s nice to know she is actually a real person, not a devil wearing Prada as so many mag editors are made out to be, as the memoir conveys. She has a knack for self-deprecating humour, with such gems as, “Jason has lived with me for more than ten years and is used to my ability to create unwanted, unnecessary and unpleasant drama out of a perfectly nice evening,” when she decides to induce her own labour, “Department store cosmetic counters intimidate me. They still do,” and, on the more extreme end of the spectrum, “I no longer had his anger in my face, his clothes in my cupboard or his bong on my coffee table”!

  • Mia’s mag-obsessed—just like me!

“Bombarding myself with pop culture, diving in deep and splashing happily around is my idea of relaxation. It’s how I unwind.” Me too, Mia. Me too. (If you’ve seen my stack, you will know just how far this obsession goes.) However, when your son tells you, “‘Sometimes it seems like you love magazines more than you love me,’” it’s time for a perspective check.

  • You learn something new every day page.

A recent spate of mag editors have been taking to their Editor’s Letters to expose the tedious task of choosing a cover each month, however Freedman was one of the first to do so in Mama Mia.

She questions her ability as a mother…

… “Namely, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO WITH A BABY”! Freedman’s blissful ignorance as a first-time mum at 25 is a major aspect of the book.

At first, I was put off by the “motherhood” aspect. As a single 22-year-old, I don’t want to be reading about pregnancy and babies—I can get Cosmo Pregnancy for that. But in all honesty, “motherhood” is the best aspect of the book; it makes the memoir at once endearing and witty.

If you know anything about Freedman, you will know that her first child, Luca, was a welcome mistake that happened just after she accepted the editorship of Cosmo. Then came Coco eight years later, who put an end to Freedman’s fertility struggle and “reminded [her] how great it is that my first child is old enough to fetch me chocolate biscuits” during gestation. Finally, before her career segue into “the big head-fuck of TV” Freedman gave birth to Remy, “pure and uncomplicated… sunshine”.

A highlight is when she informs her boss, Pat Ingram, that she’s pregnant… but can still, like, totally do the job. “I only need three months [off] max…”, she told her. When Ingram lays down the law with no less than four months maternity leave for Freedman, Freedman asks, “But what will I do all day?… Surely the baby will, you know, eat and sleep a lot and I’ll have quite a lot of spare time, won’t I?”

Oh, how wrong she was!

Again, Freedman believes her parenting skills leave much to be desired, as you can see in these choice quotes on the topic:

– “Somewhere in one of the books Jason had read that a baby should associate long sleeps with his cot so you should only put him in there at night. This meant during the day we played with him until he passed out wherever he happened to be lying, no doubt dreaming of parents who knew what they were doing.”

– “‘Your daughter has one of the more extreme dummy addictions I’ve ever seen’… Super. Almost six months old and battling her first addiction… I first gave her a dummy at four weeks. Bad mother?… Soon, the mere act of buying dummies would cheer me up. They’d replaced shoes as the object of my retail therapy.”

– “When I picked her up, I half expected to see betrayal in her eyes, as if to say, ‘So where the hell were you last night, bitch?’ But her face was as open and as delighted to see me as ever. She appeared undamaged. Lifelong gift.”

– “To keep my spirits up and my perspective in check, I’d regularly remind myself how lucky I was… to have happy, healthy children I adore. How lucky I was not to be camping. Or homeless. When all of this lost its cheering power, I dug deeper, trying to summon gratitude for having limbs, oxygen and the ability to blink.”

– “Even when the sun is out, family holidays can leave me in need of a stiff drink and a long lie-down. Or, in the case of ten consecutive rainy days, a straightjacket… I threw such a spectacular tantrum, Jason threatened me with timeout and Coco looked at me with new respect.”

– “I was so tired that I kept losing the book… so I stuck little post-it note reminders all over the house like someone with Alzheimer’s. But Coco wouldn’t follow them. It seemed she couldn’t read and this was most inconvenient… ‘The book says “put the drowsy baby in the cot”. But I don’t HAVE a drowsy baby. I have a screaming baby and THE FUCKING BOOK DOESN’T MENTION WHAT TO DO WITH ONE OF THOSE.’”

  • Bodily functions are the order of the day.

– “With one hand I tossed the pills into my mouth and with the other I undid the lid of the bottle and washed them down with two big gulps of breast milk. It was still warm. Clearly, this is known as having it all…”

– “Dear Lord, what is happening to me? I am not that person. I am not someone who talks about poo. I am not the woman in labour who is out of control. Oh wait, I am.”

– “By the time Coco was seven months old, I’d had mastitis six times…

‘Babe, maybe you should think about giving up breastfeeding,’ Jason ventured carefully one day when Coco was about five months old and he was fetching me my ugg boots to wear in bed because I was shaking with cold under a doona and two blankets in the middle of a thirty-degree day.

‘No way,’ I shot back…

Strangely, stupidly, I had breastfeeding blindness which allowed me to ignore the fact it was making me terribly ill and taking a toll on my whole family. Not to mention the glaringly obvious: I was repeatedly subjecting Coco to the antibiotics via my breast milk. Doctors swore it was safe but they admitted that some of the medication was indeed being ingested by her. Why was I being so wilfully ignorant about the fact that this was surely doing more harm to her than any good that could come from the breast milk itself?”

– “At least I’m not vomiting into garbage bins behind my desk like another friend who is in the early stages and is trying to hide her pregnancy from workmates.”

  • And finally, it’s just laugh-out-loud funny!

I caught myself audibly laughing on public transport when reading this, so here are some quotes I prepared earlier to prime you for the hilarity:

– “When the plastic packaging burst, the condom slid on its lubricant across the page and onto Wendy’s face. Just another day at the office”.

– “Hey, I love animals… Animals won’t fuck me over like the magazine industry.”

– “It was big fun. The kind of fun when you laugh so hard you think you might wee in your pants and, if you’ve ever given birth, sometimes do.”

– “Since my late teens, I’ve tried a bunch of different pills and they’ve all been hugely effective in preventing pregnancy because they turned me into a stark raving loon who was so hideous, no guy wanted to be near me.”

– “All you really need to turn on your partner when you’re trying to conceive is to wave a thermometer around… and shriek like fishwife: ‘Fucking hurry up will you! I’m OVULATING!’”

– “I am calm through all this because apart from being pain-free, I am hooked up to a foetal heart-rate monitor. Nothing makes me happier in the world than being hooked up to machines for reassurance purposes.”

And my absolute favourite quote from the book:

– “Comfortable? COMFORTABLE? What part of having the pain equivalent of a rocking chair shoved up your arse might be COMFORTABLE…?… Thankfully, the two lovely Panadol have taken away all my pain so I’m feeling fantastic. No, wait. The Panadol doesn’t even touch the sides because I AM IN GODDAMN LABOUR AND PANADOL IS FOR PISSY LITTLE HEADACHES!”

Related: Workaholics Anonymous.

Elsewhere: [Mama Mia] Hello Ralph Lauren. It seems you’ve lost your mind. Twice.

[Jezebel] Photoshop of Horrors Hall of Shame 2000-2009.

 

Book Review: Sex & the City 2 Coffee Table Book.

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Okay, so this tome is not exactly heavy on the text, but it certainly is heavy on the fashion, friends and film sets featured in the movie.

If you hated the movie (which you can read about here, here and here) like 80% of viewers, I would still recommend getting your hands on this book. The layouts are beautiful, every one of Carrie’s outfits is broken down with commentary by Sarah Jessica Parker and, my favourite aspect of the movie by far, the work that went into the set designs is fascinating.

And if you’re a fan of the series, fashion, or film in general, it is definitely worth checking out.

I’ve done all the hard work for you, so here’s a sneaky peek(y) at the book.

What They Wore

While I lamented in my earlier review of the movie that the fashions were a bit lacklustre, I have to argue, after reading this book, that the accessories are what really pushed SATC2 over the edge from mediocre to sartorial saviour. The vintage jewellery, especially, makes me glad I’m going to The Way We Wear vintage market next weekend in Williamstown, Melbourne, to pick some up for myself.

 

 

 

 

 Sets & the City

A lot of the movies I like aren’t exactly Oscar winning (more like Razzie winning; ie. 27 Dresses and Suddenly 30), but it’s the scenery they evoke that piques my interest. In that respect, SATC2 really raised the bar.

 

Stay tuned for a SATC(1) retrospective.

Book Review: The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving.

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The Hotel New Hampshire is the second of John Irving’s books I’ve read, and I’ve come to notice a pattern.

My first encounter with Irving was with his 1998 release, A Widow for One Year. A hefty tome, weighing in at 537 pages, it profiles the intertwined lives of Ruth Cole and Eddie O’Hare, the latter of which has an affair with the former’s mother, only to meet again over thirty years later when they are both—albeit Ruth more so—successful novelists. Many other plotlines are intertwined to create an intricate story spanning several decades.

A similar time frame occurs in The Hotel New Hampshire, which was published in between Irving’s two most well-known novels—The World According to Garp (1978) and The Cider House Rules (1985) in 1981.

The story begins with the courtship of Win and Mary Berry, parents of the narrator, John Berry. They meet and fall in love while staying at the hotel, Arbuthnot by the Sea, in Maine one summer, which forms the basis for Win’s idea to open The Hotel New Hampshire later in the book. As the summer draws to a close, the couple are engaged and Win sets off to attend Harvard while Mary plays housewife and gives birth to their children, Frank, Franny, John, Lilly and baby Egg.

This is where it really starts to get good.

Win buys the abandoned girls school in their childhood neighbourhood of Dairy to turn into a hotel, primarily to meet the needs of all the parents who visit their boys—and later girls, as the school becomes co-ed—at the local boarding school. The whole family, including the grandfather, Iowa Bob, move into the dilapidated building with immovable furniture and “miniature-sized” bathrooms stemming from a mix-up during installation at the female seminary. They are followed by the housekeeper, Ronda Ray, whom John has his first sexual encounter with, and Mr and Mrs. Urick, the hotel chefs.

Many coming-of-age milestones take place at the Hotel for the Berry children: Egg is revealed to be deaf; Lilly “doesn’t grow”; Frank acknowledges his homosexuality; John has his first sexual encounter with Ronda; and, most poignantly, Franny is gang raped by Chipper Dove, the captain of the Dairy School’s football team, and his fellow team-mates. Junior Jones, also a member of the team and leader of the “Black arm of the law” comes to her rescue, and the two form a close bond.

Around this time, the family Labrador Sorrow and Grandfather Iowa Bob pass away. Frank feels sorry for Franny, who repeatedly bathes away the “scent” she is left with after the assault, and wants to cheer her up with a taxidermied reincarnation of Sorrow. Reincarnation is perhaps too literal a word, as Sorrow comes to Iowa Bob in a dream shortly before his death. Comically, Frank marvels at his preservation work, saying “I’ve done such a good job with Sorrow that Grandfather has had a premonition that Sorrow’s come home”. When this version of Sorrow accidentally falls from a closet in Iowa Bob’s room, it is too much for him and he has a heart attack. Frank feels badly.

Win gets a letter from Freud, the man Win worked with the summer he met Mary at Arbuthnot by the Sea, asking him to help him run a hotel in his native Austria. Win accepts, and the family move to Vienna to start up “the second Hotel New Hampshire.”

Before the Berry’s leave, a dance is held at the hotel. Junior Jones brings along his sister, Sabrina, to be John’s date. A rape victim herself, Sabrina is perhaps held up as a mirror to Franny, and what her life could become if she is able to get over her own trauma.

Mary and Egg take a later flight than the rest of the family, with Egg insisting they take Sorrow with them.

But they never make it to Vienna, as their plane crashes and the rescuers find only Sorrow floating in the water.

The family spends some years running the second Hotel New Hampshire, which houses businessmen on one floor, prostitutes the floor above them, and radical communists also taking up residence there. John becomes involved with one of the prostitutes/radicals, Fehlgeburt, who reveals to him a terrorist plot to bomb the opera and warns him to get his family out of the hotel.

Susie, an ugly woman dressed in a bear suit, is hotel security, and she becomes somewhat of a mother figure to Franny, as well as a lover. She, like Sabrina, is a character that shares similar neuroses about rape as Franny. Susie makes Franny “sing” in ecstasy, while Franny gives Susie the confidence to overcome being raped with a bag over her head so her attackers didn’t have to look at her.

During this time, Franny and John finally act on their attraction—but it goes much deeper than that; love—for each other and share a kiss. Following this, they avoid the hell out of each other to prevent committing incest.

The recurring theme of “Sorrow”, the black dog omen that was with the family during Franny’s rape and the deaths of Iowa Bob, mother Mary and Egg, pops up again at this juncture.

Frank and John see two of the radicals, Arbeiter and Ernst (who also shares a sexual relationship with Franny) driving along the streets of Vienna with a bomb in the back of their car. A bomb “that was as weighty as Sorrow, that bomb was as big as a bear”. Funnily enough, John reads in one of Frank’s books about the opera, that a bomb exploded during a performance of Lucia, “the mad story of a brother who drives his sister crazy and causes her death, because he forces her on a man she doesn’t love… well, you can see why this particular version… would seem especially appropriate, to me,” so John likes to believe the bomb exploded during a different opera.

As the date of the opera bombing approaches, Ernst informs the blind Freud that he will be driving the car with the bomb in it. If Freud “fuck[s] it up… we’ll kill them all,” Arbeiter informs him.

Furthermore, the radicals decide to use the Berry’s as hostages if the bombing doesn’t go to plan to gain worldwide recognition. “We’ll have an American family as hostage. And a tragic American family, too. The mother and the youngest child already the victims of an accident… And here we have a father struggling to raise his four surviving children, and we’ll have them all captured,” Ernst says.

In the aftermath of the bombing, Freud is killed as he took on the role of suicide bomber, along with the radicals, while Win is blinded by the blast. No one inside the opera is hurt, and the Berry’s become international heroes, which little Lilly capitalises on with the publication of her memoir, Trying to Grow.

“‘Now that I’m going to get published… I’ve got to keep growing… the next book has to be bigger than the first. And the one after that… will have to be even bigger,” Lilly says. Lilly will succumb to the pressure of failing to live up to her first book, and commit suicide.

“Sorry… just not big enough,” her suicide note would read.

John tells Frank, “… It would take anyone longer to cover twenty blocks and a zoo than it takes to fall fourteen stories— the distance from the window to the corner suite on the… fourteenth floor to the pavement…” as he beats himself up over not being able to save her.

The family does enjoy one last victory before Lilly’s death, though, and that is Franny’s revenge on her rapist, Chipper Dove.

Lilly crafts a script—“a real opera, a genuine fairytale”—which casts Susie the Bear as—what else?—a bear cum rapist, Franny and Frank as insane, and John as the only normal one, whom Chipper believes is an ally, with prostitutes and fellow rape victims in supporting roles. While the faux-bear-rape of Chipper serves as symbolic closure for not just Franny, but The Hotel New Hampshire as a story, it isn’t over yet.

Because, “as in any fairytale, just when you think you’re out of the woods, there is more to the woods than you thought…”

And so Sorrow returns in the form of Lilly’s death.

The rest of the family, however, go on to live relatively happily for the rest of the tale. John plays along with his blind father’s wish to run a third Hotel New Hampshire, a “joke I have played on Father for all these years”; Franny and John finally act on their incestuous love and get it out of their systems; Susie “exhausted her bear’s role” with Chipper Dove, and becomes John’s lover; Franny and Junior Jones get married, get pregnant, and get rid of their baby by giving it to John and Susie.

The Hotel New Hampshire is very much a novel about family, even more so than it is about coming-of-age, “Sorrow” and perseverance, and the ups and downs of this very eccentric one that Irving has crafted. As radical Arbeiter says, “Americans are simply crazy about the idea of the family.”

How NOT to Promote Your Book

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This may be a helpful post for any other writers who read this blog, specifically those who want to publish a novel someday.

Personally, I don’t like to be told what to do and, especially in terms of getting your work out there in the form of a novel or even a blog, you can often be given a lot of advice you haven’t asked for and don’t want or need.

Sometimes being told what not to do can be more helpful, as these are concrete, finite guidelines to disregard only if you want to fail.

Author of How to Be Inappropriate, Daniel Nester, recently submitted a blog post to We Who Are About to Die, entitled “13 Don’ts I Learned While Writing, Editing, Marketing and Promoting My Book.” I won’t go into too much depth, but feel free to check it out if you’re planning on becoming a novelist anytime soon.

1. Don’t worry about the niche until the niche finds you.

I have found “finding a niche” to be an annoying piece of advice, but as this blog goes on, I feel I am falling into one, rather than starting off with a clear-cut idea in mind.

2. Have a gimmicky title, but don’t take it too seriously.

Titles “grab people’s attention, but that’s it… The people who take titles too seriously, by and large, are reviewers…”

3. Don’t rely on yourself as a proofreader.

I cannot stress this enough. Incorrect grammar and, especially, spelling is my biggest pet peeve, and I can’t stand it when I see typos in published works. Facebook, Twitter and blogs are a bit of a different story, but I’m still pretty unforgiving when it comes to even that!

4. Don’t proofread your own galleys, either.

“So your book looks perfect because it’s all in a different font and there are page numbers, right? Wrong. Also, if you’re sick of your book by then, it’s probably not a good book.”

5. Don’t ask famous strangers for blurbs.

Nester asserts that to keep the dust jacket as “organic as possible,” it’s better to ask people you know who have expressed an interest in and generally like your work. “And ask them personally.”

6. Don’t read from your book at readings.

For those of you with eye conditions, “Print out your pieces in 14-point writing with ample margins.”

7. Don’t read from another book at readings.

I thought this was a given, as people who buy tickets or show up to readings by an author of their latest book generally want to hear writing from that author’s latest book.

8. Don’t take reviews too seriously.

At the end of the day, not everyone is in agreeance as to what constitutes a good piece of writing (see Negative Amazon Reviews). Speaking from personal experience, back in my uni days I worked my butt off on a research piece on the Chris Benoit double murder-suicide, only to receive a dismal C. If anything, the bad mark made me more loyal to and proud of the original work, and to strive to get better when writing future pieces. On the other hand, my Year 12 media project was a mock magazine, which wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever done, but my markers saw how much effort I put into it and thus, I received an A. Maybe it would have been a similar story if my damn uni marker had seen me slaving over the laptop…

9a. Don’t give away your books. Sell them.

Pretty self-explanatory.

9b. Do give out free stuff…

… in conjunction with the buying of the books.

10. Don’t feel guilty not having your event at the local indie bookstore.

Bottom line is, independent bookstores don’t cater to everyone’s needs, or may not pull the target audience you believe would be interested in your book.

11a. Don’t forget to time your readings.

See the original blog post for a profanity-laden anecdote on death matches.

11b. And don’t read more than 15 minutes.

12. Don’t have more than one drink before your reading.

“There’s plenty of time afterward to get drunk.”

13. Don’t forget that all this is supposed to be fun and joyful.

You had your book published! “Hug people… wear a silly outfit”!

Book Review: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

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I was wary of reading Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novella A Clockwork Orange. Who isn’t aware of its unbridled sexual and physical violence, but come on, it’s a classic! But, like many classics I’ve read over the years, I’m glad to have read it and to forget it.

I find the most enjoyable novels, for me at least, are those that are effortless to read. You don’t have to try to analyse what’s going on; it just falls in your lap through the author’s sheer skill. There may be themes and a “moral to the story”, but they don’t present themselves obviously and analytically; the pieces of the puzzle you weren’t even aware were there just fit together like a jigsaw.

A Clockwork Orange was not one of these novel(las).

Now, I’m not arguing that it doesn’t serve a purpose in pop culture as a manifesto of youth culture, violence, government and free will, just that it’s bloody hard to read!

I’m not a fan of the “new speech that is the teenage slang of the not-too-distant future” Burgess uses, a fictional language called Nadsat combined with Russian, that encompasses such phrases as “horrorshow” (good), “malenky” (little), “malchicks” (boy), “viddy” (see), “plenny” (prisoner), “tolchok” (beat) and “veshch” (thing). I find they distract from the story because you have to annoyingly search your brain (or, at least, the dictionary some copies come with to help decipher the prose) to understand what the hell narrator Alex is talking about!

I also watched the movie, which I had great expectations for, however, when I told some friends and family I was going to be reviewing the movie, I was met with words of warning. The guy at the library said it was disturbing, and my mother told me to watch it in the day. And so I did.

The time of day I watched it didn’t make much of a difference to the eerie subject matter and graphic scenes and the way I felt afterwards. Much like with the book, I felt deflated and uncomfortable at the end.

The final scene, though, was my favourite—no, not just because it was finally over after 120-plus minutes! Malcolm McDowell who plays Alex really showcases his range as an actor throughout the film, but specifically in this scene. His sinister reaction at being in hospital in a full body cast after jumping from a window at the sound of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a recurring theme in the tale, is priceless. Ultimately, the film ends with Alex being informed he has recovered from the experiment, and he sarcastically looks into the camera, saying “I was cured, alright”, followed by a rousing performance of the repeated “Singin’ in the Rain”

The overt and excessive use of nudity was a bit much and would be out of place in a B-, C-, or even D-list movie, let alone one of A Clockwork Orange’s canonical calibre.

I will compliment Stanley Kubric on directing with such simplicity, which I think is what really tipped the film over the edge into the realm hard-hitting filmmaking.

I would recommend seeing the film and reading the book for those of you who haven’t already, just to recognise what all the fuss was—and is—about.

Personally, I don’t.

Book Review: Another City, Not My Own by Dominick Dunne.

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Two weeks ago I reviewed the lacklustre The Mansions of Limbo by Dominick Dunne. But as my favourite author, Dunne can do no wrong in my eyes. This time around, I’m reviewing the book that changed my life, Another City, Not My Own.

There’s nothing in particular that makes it a life changing book for probably anyone other than myself, but after I’d read it, there was no going back. I picked up the “novel in the form of a memoir” in mid 2009 after reading O.J. Simpson’s confessional, If I Did It. I had become fascinated and obsessed with the case, and Dunne’s commentary in the afterword was my first encounter with the famous name dropper.

I’m sure I Wikied him, as I do all new authors and books I come across to better familiarise myself with their writing and whether I want to commit to a book by them, and found out that Dunne was a Hollywood producer whose drug and alcohol fuelled lifestyle caused his wife to divorced him and the industry to shun him. Dunne became a recluse, penning his first New York Times Bestseller, The Winners, in a cabin in Oregon.

The murder of his daughter, Poltergeist star Dominique Dunne, and the subsequent “slap on the wrist” her killer—and boyfriend—received drew Dunne out of the woodwork and into the public glare once again. He became an advocate for victims rights and justice brought against rich and famous offenders, covering such high-profile cases as the trial of Claus von Bülow, charged with attempted murder as his estranged wife Sunny lay in a vegetative state after an alleged insulin overdose; Kennedy relatives Michael Skakel and William Kennedy Smith, serving time for the murder of teenage neighbour Martha Moxley (on which the 1993 novel, A Season in Purgatory, is based) and acquitted of rape charges, respectively; the Menedez murders; and, of course, the O.J. Simpson trial, for Vanity Fair. I could not get enough of his storied history and fascinating accounts of the dark side of Hollywood.

While I have only read a small sampling of Dunne’s published books, as they are quite hard to get a hold of, I just knew from the first self-deprecating paragraphs denouncing his credibility as a crime reporter and mention of the notorious footballer cum alleged murderer cum black hero O.J., as with all good books, that this was going to be one to remember.

Another City, Not My Own chronicles Dunne’s alter ego Gus Bailey’s return from New York back to the city that ruined his life, Los Angeles, for the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s fictionalised (Dunne’s real son Griffin is now Bailey’s son Grafton; A Season in Purgatory is the narrator’s book-turned-miniseries), and such famous names as Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, the Spellings, Michael Jackson and Heidi Fleiss make guest appearances, if only in the form of dinner table gossip fodder. In addition, the larger-than-life main players, O.J., Nicole Brown Simpson, the Goldman family, Kim, Khloe and Kourtney’s dead daddy Robert Kardashian, pool boy Kato Kaelin, racist cop Mark Furhman, Nicole’s drug addicted friend, Faye Resnick, and super-lawyers, prosecutor Marcia Clark, and the arrogant Johnnie Cochran for the defence, make Another City, Not My Own read like a salacious gossip mag or blockbuster movie.

This book boats a twist, turn and pop culture reference on every page, making your eyes race to keep up as your mind tries to savour the action, because once you’ve read the shock ending, which links to another high profile ’90s murder, there’s no going back.

Related: The Mansions of Limbo by Dominick Dunne Review.

Book Review: Animal Farm by George Orwell

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There has been a lot of talk of Animal Farm on the internet lately, so I thought, what better time to post a review of the 1945 George Orwell classic than now?

For those of you not familiar with the story of Animal Farm, here is a quick low-down (spoiler-alert):

After an uprising from the animals of Manor Farm, it is renamed Animal Farm as it’s “four legged” residents run its human owners out, representing the events prior to World War II in Stalin-led Russia.

During this revolt, Old Major (who is said to channel Karl Marx or perhaps Vladimir Lenin—although Christopher Hitchens notes that “there is a Stalin pig and a Trotsky pig, but no Lenin pig… Nobody appears to have pointed this out at the time [sic] and if I may say so, nobody but myself has done so since; it took me years to notice what was staring me in the face”) the farm’s boar leader, comes up with the Seven Commandments of Animalism (mirroring Communism), which young pigs Snowball and Napoleon put into practice after Old Major’s death. These Commandments are:

  • Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
  • Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
  • No animal shall wear clothes.
  • No animal shall sleep in a bed.
  • No animal shall drink alcohol.
  • No animal shall kill any other animal.
  • All animals are equal.

At first the residents of Animal Farm are happy and embrace the Seven Commandments, but turmoil quickly ensues. Snowball and Napoleon (meant to represent Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, respectively) become drunk with power, challenging the other residents of the farm and each other.

Snowball suggests building a windmill, but Napoleon opposes it and has Snowball run out of the Farm. Napoleon takes over leadership, and he and his army of pigs, including right-hand man Squealer, declare that Snowball stole the idea for the windmill from Napoleon, and that they will go ahead with the erection of it.

After a violent storm, the windmill is found destroyed and Napoleon accuses Snowball of sneaking in and demolishing it. Anyone believed to be consorting with Snowball is killed off, and Napoleon brainwashes the poor residents into believing that Animal Farm is better than the human-run Manor Farm. Meanwhile, the pigs adopt human characteristics and begin to walk upright.

As the novella comes to a close, the Seven Commandments have been changed to accommodate Napoleon and his pigs; “no animal shall sleep in a bed” becomes “no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets”, and “but some animals are more equal than others” is added to the final commandment. After the sacrifice of many of the Farm’s residents, the final scene describes a dinner party held by Napoleon for the residents of the area, both human and porcine, between which the other animals cannot tell the difference.

That’s the premise of Animal Farm crammed into as small a nutshell as I could find!

I loved that the book was simply written, yet the themes and messages were still easily deciphered. I highly recommend acquiring the book, as most editions come with several Orwell-written Appendices which highlight the political undertones of the story.

I also recently watched the 1999 film version, starring Kelsey Grammar as the voice of Snowball and Julia Louis-Dreyfus voicing horse Mollie. While Andrew O’Hagan writes that “art involving talking animals is often deeply political”, I chose to bypass the 1954 animation as the newer adaptation was more readily available for hire and more closely resembles the book.

One major difference, though, is that the role of border collie Jessie is heightened in the movie, and she plays narrator and the maternal voice of reason. Snaps to the dog’s trainer, as Jessie is very lovable—as all dogs are—and believable. It’s those puppy dog eyes, I tell ya.

Speaking of animal authenticity, the pigs chosen to play Napoleon and Squealer were appropriately repugnant, whereas Snowball’s onscreen incarnation garnered much more sympathy from me than he did in print.

The film version moved along much quicker, and I thought the use of propaganda films starring Napoleon and Squealer to address the animals of the farm was very smart. These films showed the pubic hangings of rats and hens, à la Stalin, and amendments to the commandments.

All in all, the movie was likeable, and served as a motion picture compliment to better illustrate the ideas and goings on in the book.

But book over movie every time, baby!

Elsewhere: [The Guardian] Andrew O’Hagan on Fiction’s Talking Animals.

Taking a Leaf Out of Amazon’s Book: GOOD Customer Reviews

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After last week’s soul crushing compilation of the worst Amazon reviews on my favourite books, I feel it’s time for a more uplifting account of each book, from some not-so-biased sources.

So here, primarily to build up my wounded book-reviewing pride, are the best reviews of my favourite books.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

The majority of reviews on this classic were positive, so it’s just a matter of picking the best. Put simply, by Mrliteral, To Kill a Mockingbird is “a true classic”. But Bett Norris articulates her feelings beautifully: “I have always liked books better than people. Some books are better friends than many people I know… To Kill a Mockingbird will remain a treasured, dear old friend.”

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

1,703 people gave this book top marks, including A Customer, who calls it “a brilliant coming-of-age novel.”

James Tyler says he “can remember enjoying this book the first time I read it. But I had no idea that with each subsequent reading I would find more and more to enjoy…”

Finally, B. Michini says Catcher is “a timeless, honest, controversial, superbly written tale” because protagonist Holden Caulfield “made me feel like there were others in this predicament that we call adolescence.”

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann.

It seems most reviewers enjoyed this book, too, if only for it’s so-bad-it’s-good qualities. Childof80s—naturally—says it’s “more addictive than the pills its heroines take. Sure, it’s trashy, but trash is by far the most entertaining form of literature.” Thankyou for proving my point.

DevJohn01 goes as far as to say that “this cult classic is just what the doctor ordered,” while Timothy R. Wilkins says it’s “a classic and necessary primer for all lovers of pure camp!”

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

Feelings about this vampire tale were split fairly evenly across the board. Nancy B. Miller summarises it nicely, saying “Kostova has crafted a slow-building story that blends scholarship and the supernatural in a unique and fascinating way.”

When this book was released in 2006, it was compared to The Da Vinci Code, as so many works with an historical mystery plotline are. I probably enjoyed The Da Vinci Code more than The Historian, but just by a hair. 340bookfan is having none of this, calling The Historian “a real writer’s answer to The Da Vinci Code.” I will agree that The Historian is written in a more complex manner, and the author spent ten years bringing the pieces of Dracula’s puzzle together, so Kostova’s practically an historian herself!

Tietam Brown by Mick Foley.

Much like The Catcher in the Rye, Tietam Brown is a coming-of-age tale that deals with controversial subject matter. R. A. Ward has “a hard time quantifying it for this review,” and I had a similar reaction to it, too.

Big-noter Aaron J. Palmer, with a multitude of MAs, and BAs and PhDs, who has “read a lot of [novels]” calls Tietam Brown “without a doubt, one of the best novels I’ve ever read.” Finally, Charles E. Henry commends Foley for “some great character development” and the way the book “manages to be funny, disturbing, sad and hopeful all at the same time.”

I will agree that its appeal is very hard to put into words, but I think it is a novel that almost anyone would enjoy.

Watership Down by Richard Adams.

Richard Adams’ tale of talking bunnies gets an “A+ rating” from B. Merritt, who thanks the publishers for taking a chance on a novel that “really wasn’t a children’s tale, nor adult literature”, because “if they hadn’t, we surely would have been denied a true literary classic.

A common theme here is Watership Down’s nostalgic presence in the reviewers’ lives. David Huber and Lawrance M. Bernabo both recall coming of an intense J.R.R. Tolkien ride, thinking nothing they would ever read could live up to the standard set by Lord of the Rings. They both admit how wrong they were, with Huber marvelling at “how one person can actually produce such lovable characters… that actually make [sic] you feel various emotions for each of them.” Now I want to revisit this classic (bunny) tale!

I’ll add you to my list, Watership…

A Lion’s Tale by Chris Jericho.

If I can refer back to last week’s post regarding this title, it is not hard to find positive reviews on this one. Ranging from being “the best wrestling book I’ve ever read” (C. Sawin) to a “book wrestling fans can honestly recommend to non-wrestling fans about wrestling” (S. Albert) to, plain and simple, “the best wrestling [auto]biography ever!” (Pwa Y. Soo), I pretty much agree with all of them.

Another City, Not My Own by Dominick Dunne.

This is my Achilles heel; it just so happens that my favourite book ever is universally panned by critics—which is not uncommon for a Dominick Dunne book—and the general public alike!

But there are a few good ones, which is not as disheartening as going through all the negative ones! Cecilia Sheppard shares my sentiments in saying she “devour[s] this man’s books like fine chocolates.”

A Customer pinpoints the strange feeling I had after completing this “novel in the form of a memoir”, calling it “unnerving”, while jtj3 says he “was an O.J. trial junkie”, just as I became after reading this book. He “literally could not put the book down” and believes it is “Dunne’s fictionalised autobiography”, as so much of his career centred around O.J. Simpson.

Related: Taking a Leaf Out of Amazon’s Book: Bad Customer Reviews.

Book Review: The Mansions of Limbo by Dominick Dunne

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The author states in the introduction that the phrase “the mansions of limbo” came to him “years ago, reading a book whose title I no longer remember.”

If you are familiar with Dominick Dunne (if you’re familiar with this blog, you’re familiar with Dunne; he is my favourite author and I will jump at any chance to drop his name. Funnily enough, the subtitle of his memoir is Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper), you will know that he profiled the lifestyles of the rich and famous for twenty five years in Vanity Fair. But more interestingly, he focussed on the justice, or rather injustice, system in relation to celebrities, such as the Menendez brothers, O.J. Simpson and the murder of his daughter, Poltergeist star Dominique Dunne, in 1982.

His award-winning account of the murder of Jose and Kitty Menendez by their sons, Lyle and Erik Menendez, “Nightmare on Elm Drive” opens the tome, while Dunne’s majestic profile of Queen Noor al Hussein of Jordan wraps it up. In all honesty, as blasphemous as it is to say, those are probably the only two articles worth reading in this out-of-print collection. There is also a humorous write-up on the Collins sisters, Joan and Jackie, but the majority were written before I was born or in my early years of life, about subjects who have gone down in little-known infamy.

However, I do recommend Dunne’s work to anyone who will listen.

I first became familiar with him after reading the O.J. Simpson confessional If I Did It, which is well worth your money/library card. I then stumbled across his fictional account of the double murder, Another City, Not My Own which I can confidently say changed my life and immediately became my favourite book. (I will be posting a review here in the not-too-distant future; but don’t let last week’s negative Amazon reviews turn you off!)

Elsewhere: [Marie Claire] Dominick Dunne: Hollywood’s Diarist.

[Vanity Fair] Nightmare on Elm Drive.

Taking a Leaf Out of Amazon’s Book: Bad Customer Reviews

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Jeanette Demain recently wrote for Salon.com an article on “amateur critics” bemoaning the plotlines of her favourite books, most of them canonical.

At the end of her Amazon search-related compilation of readers’ negative comments on classics from “The Grapes of Wrath to 1984”, she urges readers to peruse Amazon’s customer reviews of their favourite books.

So, I thought I might take a stab at this, and compiled my very own list of attacks on the books that “changed my life forever”.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

One of the finest pieces of modern American literature, I was hard pressed to find bad reviews on this one. The harshest was from three-star-rater Jane A. Marshall, who said To Kill a Mockingbird was “a good book but not as good as the movie. The exact ending as to how the attacker was killed left too much doubt as to who actually was the killer—I don’t think this was a good way to end the book.” Mmm, good, good, good. And more good.

Seriously, though, for my money Harper Lee crafted one of the best endings of all time. So much so that I defaced my copy by highlighting the passage for easy retrieval when I want to marvel at the beauty and power a good writer can wield.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

One Amazon discussion thread was titled “Catcher in the Rye should be banned”, and continued with “not because it’s obscene or perverse”—ever read Bret Easton Ellis, my friend?—“but…because it’s a lousy book.” Eloquently put.

The general consensus in response to that thread was a) who are you to judge whether a book should be banned based on it’s lousy-ness, and b) we are not in favour of censorship. My sentiments exactly.

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann.

While I will agree that this book is somewhat fluffy compared to the others on this list, I wouldn’t say that it was “a huge disappointment,” according to A Customer. They go on to say that, “I have loved the movie version of Valley of the Dolls for a long time. Admittedly, it is a BAD movie, but its camp sensibility and generally over-the-top style make it a classic of the ‘bad movie’ genre.”

Put a different way, Wayne M. Malin calls it a “silly soap opera that follows three women… [through] death, suicide, lesbianism, cancer, marriages, tons of drug abuse, institutionalisation, etc…” Yes, but isn’t that the appeal of the thing?!

I will agree on one of the most common allegations, that protagonist Anne Welles “ is perhaps the dullest character ever created,” said QueensGirl.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

The author of this book, whose “plot unfolds through three points of view—a 16-year-old girl in search of her father who disappeared into vampire land in 1972 and reveals himself through letters to her, the father who was searching sixteen years earlier for his abducted thesis advisor who secondarily reveals himself through a trail of letters, and the thesis advisor who was searching for Dracula through historical research,” has apparently “committed an act of such brutality that it rivals any atrocity that Vlad Tepes [aka Dracula] ever committed,” reviewer Carlos asserts. (Thanks for the plot summation, William J. Meggs!)

Meggs goes on to say that “if you would enjoy the tedium of being an historian digging through old libraries, you might enjoy the tedium of reading this book.” I would, and I did, thankyou very much!

Tietam Brown by Mick Foley.

It was difficult to find a bad review for this novel, “because only wrestling fans read it.” Which is probably 90% true, but even non-wrestling fan reviewers found it a struggle to comment negatively on it.

But lo and behold, I found the diamond in the rough in A Customer’s (again—take credit for your opinions, people!) response: “The dialogue is painfully bad, I’d rather be stuck in the ring with Mick for ten minutes than be subjected to reading another ten minutes of this book.” With Foley’s trademark barbed wire-encased baseball bat and thumbtacks? That is a fate worse than death.

Harsh.

Watership Down by Richard Adams.

Mostly light-hearted fun-poking to be found in the Customer Reviews section for this book. Caraculiambro says, “I suppose my threshold for silliness for books with talking animals (particularly bunnies) is The Wind in the Willows. Anything more sophisticated than that is preposterous, I think… on the whole, it’s hard to take it seriously unless you’re a pre-teen girl. But if you are, good luck with the language.” Touché.

Much in the same vein, Lucy the Bargain Hunter says, “this book is really boring, but since there was no bad language or sex, I didn’t have any excuse for not trying to get through it.” She then goes on to ask, as I have many a time after ploughing through a Jane Austen or Stephenie Meyer, “everyone else loves this book. Maybe there is something wrong with me[?].” To borrow a phrase from the late Brittany Murphey’s Tai in Clueless, “everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, a’ight?”

A Lion’s Tale by Chris Jericho.

Again, another WWE alumnus’ tome, so it is geared towards a very niche audience with mostly glowing reviews. The most damning assessment comes from Sean M. Hurley, who says the autobiography doesn’t live up to that of Mick Foley’s debut, Have a Nice Day, or even “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels’ ghost-written memoir. “My main gripe with the book is that Chris doesn’t get as personal with the reader as one would have enjoyed. Mick really exposes himself and allows himself to be vulnerable, while Chris still seemed to be holding back…” he says. Funny, as I found A Lion’s Tale to be on par, if not better, than Have a Nice Day…

Another City, Not My Own by Dominick Dunne.

Dredging through page after page after page of one star reviews hurt, as this is my absolute favourite of all the books on this list.

To dig the knife in even further, A Customer says “I had to rate the book at least one star for the review to be kept. Actually, it’s worth zero.” Show your face, nameless hater!

Next week, the positive reviews! Yay!

Elsewhere: [Salon] Amazon Reviewers Think This Masterpiece Sucks.