Book reviews
Issue #23
By Venus Zine Staff
Published: March 1st, 2005 | 3:53pm
Everyone’s Pretty (Soft Skull)
By Lydia Millet
200 pages, $13
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: So, an alcoholic L.A. pornographer, his pious Catholic sister, a slutty teenage math genius, a randy Christian Scientist germaphobe, and a promiscuous blond bombshell all walk into a bar. OK, maybe you haven’t heard that one, but considering the preciously eccentric setup, you can imagine the trivial punch line awaiting at the end of Lydia Millet’s gutsy but overwrought fourth novel, Everyone’s Pretty.
The story hinges on the intimately narrated vignettes of five luckless characters who grope and bruise their way through a rudderless narrative, abruptly alternating points of view amid three cartoonish days when all five lives conveniently intersect. Unfortunately, only one of these characters, the blond bombshell, is compelling — Alice’s existential drift, due to fleeting sexcapades, corporate ennui, and familial estrangement, generates just enough sympathy to keep readers involved. Despite Millet’s repeatedly forced attempts at trangressive absurdism ("the universe contracted like an angry sphincter"), the riskiest moment in the novel is surprisingly its most ordinary: when Alice, submerged in a tubful of water, despairs to herself, “I should have done it all differently.” Finally forsaking her beloved quirkiness, Millet refreshingly reveals some tenderness in the everyday heartache.
Everyone’sPretty shows an occasional flash of potency, but mostly Millet opts for unfunny hyperbole: Ken, the novel’s token “unpleasantly hairy porn-loving ex-con midget sidekick,” kills a bar patron’s pet parrot in the men’s room and gets fucked to death by the Christian Scientist’s homely wife. The rest of Millet’s puppets fare no better — these comedic devices garner laughs only at their own expense. How Millet expects anyone to truly invest in characters perpetually on the ass-end of her tasteless wisecracks is beyond me. Sadly, Everyone’sPretty is incriminating evidence that the worst compliment anyone ever paid Millet was telling her that she’s a funny writer. — Jared Elms
Suzy Zeus Gets Organized (Bloomsbury USA)
By Maggie Robbins
96 pages, $17.95
Suzy Zeus Gets Organized, a novel in verse, could have been a juicy morsel of campy, poetic pleasure, yet its unusual form is also its demise. Author and psychotherapist Maggie Robbins employs a chipper, singsong cadence, evocative of Gwendolyn Brooks, to tell the story of Suzy Zeus, yet the pacing is so fast that to call it a page-turner is an understatement. While buoyed by a tantalizing turn of phrase here or a delightful pop-culture reference there, it becomes evident that you're turning the pages, not to see what happens next, but out of some sort of submission to a metronomic master. It’s like being under the tutelage of a stern piano teacher who turns on her metronome at the beginning of the lesson and insists, "Play, play, play!”
The title implies that Suzy is on a trajectory toward becoming “organized,” yet she never seems to make any transformations. Instead of Suzy herself changing, it seems merely that her objects of desire become increasingly inappropriate, from Harry the volatile loser to Robert the priest, and finally William, of whom Suzy thinks, "She can change him off of gay / get that man a gay divorce.” In the end, she turns to religion, but it seems like just another infatuation. The monotonous voice relentlessly flies through each and every event, never slowing down or giving any one moment more weight than another. The breakneck speed creates a flippant tone that undermines the story.
Suzy Zeus is a fun, fast read, filled with many small moments of wordplay and some hilarious mishaps, but ultimately it never moves beyond its own novelty as a hybrid form. Though the verse is well crafted, Robbins leaves us with a dizzying and superficial novel. — Kelly White
Cherries in the Snow (Three Rivers Press)
By Emma Forrest
288 pages, $13
Emma Forrest’s third novel reads like a cross between Bridget Jones’s Diary and an Urban Decay ad. And if you’re thinking very clever fluff, you’re on the right track. Sadie, a 24-year-old British transplant living in New York, has a cushy job naming makeup for her friends’ company, a knack for choosing commitment-phobic men, an obsession with her cat, and a bra collection as gigantic as her anxiety about her drooping breasts. She fancies herself a novelist, but, more intent on finding the perfect name for a red lipstick, she deletes every chapter she pens.
She has always dated emotionally unavailable older men, until Marley, a distractingly gorgeous graffiti artist, wanders into her life. Sadie falls hard, and it seems Marley’s fallen, too. The only kink in Sadie’s otherwise perfect plan is his 8-year-old daughter, Montana; she’s a little (read: maniacally) protective of her dad, and seems bent on prying the two lovebirds apart.
Are you snoozing yet? I wouldn’t blame you. Forrest’s rehashed premise is straightforward romantic comedy, pure and very simple. Obviously, Sadie and Marley wind up together, despite Montana’s best — and most hilarious — efforts. Though she may be likable, Sadie is not nearly as quirky as Forrest clearly wishes, despite a few memorable nuggets of inner monologue, like this one: “There is nothing more gorgeous than a girl in a dress eating dessert. Holly told me that. She says it makes her want to come.”
To Forrest’s credit, the lipstick names that tag each chapter of Cherries in the Snow are sparklingly original — who could resist Ass-Slapping Pink? It’s too bad the rest of the book doesn’t follow suit. — Emilie Zanger
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