Normal People

Normal People

By Sally Rooney

Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

There was such an emphasis on "good" versus "bad" - whether or not Marianne or Connell were "nice".  I understand some of that, to a degree, since it's something I struggle with as well - do my interactions with this person make me nicer, how can I be nicer to people - but there was such a focus on it, it was hard to tell if it was coming from the author or the characters.   There's a point at the end where Marianne thinks about how Connell's life has been shaped by the first fateful decision to sleep together - where he went to school, how he dates people, his attitude - and marvels at the impact they have had on each other.  That's the beauty of Normal People, to narrow in on that piece of astonishing truth. 

One thing that did drive me crazy though: the book is basically shorter sections, generally taking place weeks or months apart, and switching viewpoints between Marianne and Connell.  We'd end one, and then pick up the next, usually halfway through a scene, and then the narrator would flashback at some point to what happened since the last section.  For example, Marianne and Connell would sleep together, and then the next section be them breaking up, and we'd have to flashback to see what happened in the interim.  It's fine to do it, but it felt way overused and got pretty stale by the end. I'd be like, ho hum, here we go again, waiting to see how things got fucked up this time.    

For all that I've been complaining about these contemporary romances involving people jumping into long term commitment, Normal People sure was the antidote to that! The push and pull of the relationship went on for years.  I think though, it was a good pace - nothing felt out of character or surprising, although, I am going to complain that once again, we miss out of some of the most important character development by skipping through long swathes of time towards the end of the book - in this case, both Connell's anxiety/depression treatment, and Marianne's masochistic sex habits.  The ending is optimistic and hopeful, with Marianne basically telling Connell that they'll come together and you do believe her (at least, I did) but it's built on this idea that both Connell and Marianne have matured and know themselves well enough to avoid their earlier pitfalls, and honestly, I'm not sure that foundation is supported enough since we've effectively glossed over both of their "recoveries".  

It's a nice enough book, not going to become a favorite of mine, but well-written.  Now that some time has passed since I finished it, I think my main feeling of the book looking back is "wistful" although that's not something I necessarily thought of while I was in the midst of reading it.  I ended up taking some time off reading "serious" fiction for awhile after this one, I felt like I just needed more lightweight books to lift my serotonin, although, as always, it's the thought provoking and difficult books that inspire me to read more.  Normal People does a good job of narrowing in on a specific phase of some people's lives - let's call it the "college years" - where each relationship becomes a building block of your adulthood and decisions feel like they echo down the rest of your life, and while all this is going on, you make stupid decisions because communication is a learned skill and most people can't do it very well when they're in their early 20s.  A lot of the first half of the book is like that - hurt feelings and missteps because one of them assumes the other's intent or some such, and that felt realistic for the most part, but I can also see where readers might lose patience with characters whose heads are basically up their own butts pretty often.  Perhaps that's why we feel optimistic at the end of the book even though (as I said above) I don't think Rooney covers enough of the critical turning point for readers to believe in the ability of Connell and Marianne to handle a relationship well: it's because we have been there ourselves, and we have done it successfully. 

This Must be the Place

This Must be the Place

By Maggie O'Farrell

 

Daniel Sullivan leads a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn, and his wife, Claudette, is a reclusive ex–film star given to pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway. Together, they have made an idyllic life in the country, but a secret from Daniel's past threatens to destroy their meticulously constructed and fiercely protected home. Shot through with humor and wisdom, This Must Be the Place is an irresistible love story that crisscrosses continents and time zones as it captures an extraordinary marriage, and an unforgettable family, with wit and deep affection.

I have no idea why this was on my reading list - I think I must have gotten the impression it was a comedy? I couldn't figure out why it had a waitlist at the library.  And then partway through it, I realized the author is BLOWING UP over her newest book, Hamnet, and she's actually an award-winning literaturist and maybe I should pay attention and learn a little something from reading This Must be the Place, huh.  

Like many other reviewers, I struggled in the first couple sections.  Not because I was having trouble following the story, per se, but because I was struggling to figure out if it would get any better.  I have an entirely rational dislike of average male characters who seem to glide through life thinking they're special in some way, and Daniel Sullivan was just... not my bag.

 I spent the first part of the book getting irritated by Dan's narration, then drawn into Claudette's story, then so aggravated by Dan's cheating-on-his-girlfriend-who-just-had-an-abortion-like-earlier-that-day activities that I spent the next chunk of book actively wishing him ill, and then after he actually does screw up his life (ironically, not because of the situation with his ex-girlfriend, but because his oldest daughter is shot in a random mugging) with depression and alcohol and drugs, ended up wanting him to get back together with Claudette because of how obviously unhappy everyone was when they split up.  Never satisfied! 

I did like the section on Claudette's memorabilia, partly because it was so unexpected, just flipping along and then suddenly you're in the middle of an auction book on a faux celebrity.  I can't imagine how they did all the photos and stuff - are those real magazines? Are those the author's bags? Inquiring minds want to know.  It suddenly became a mixed-media piece and I was here. for. it.  (I don't know how to do those clapping emojis, just imagine them).  I also liked all the different locations, it really was like traveling all over the world. O'Farrell has a real talent for scene setting.

Here's a fun fact: I didn't care about Phoebe at all - not during her narration, not when we find out she died young, and not when her death becomes a huge driving force in the book.  I mean, in a book where you have a famous actress fake her own death and then marry a divorced American who's wandering the countryside with his grandfather's ashes and apparently all of their collective kids are somehow geniuses/extraordinary in their own ways, and you're gonna add a tragic and random shooting death in there too? I feel like we're approaching magical realism, or maybe the opposite, ordinary non-realism.  

 

Does the story give me any insights or thoughts about relationships, between husband and wife, father and child, etc? Not really, all these people are pretty weird, like living in a Wes Anderson movie weird. 

The back of my edition also has a bunch of book group questions, which I normally find to be pretty banal, but in this case were more intriguing, perhaps because the book itself was more obscure? It did ask why we thought O'Farrell included the viewpoints of fairly tertiary or one-off characters (like Dan's mom Theresa, random acquaintance Rosalind, and former lover Timou) and to be honest, I'm not... entirely... sure? I mean, I feel like Timou's was in there to prove a point that he used Claudette for professional success and couldn't do it without her, although frankly, I don't think anything we hear about him in the book really justifies Claudette faking the death of herself and their child and then telling him that he needs to call her brother if he wants to see their son. I mean - so what if he is a deadbeat dad? Just because Ari seems stable enough without him (although how stable can he be, having a kid at 17?) doesn't give you the moral (or legal) right to cut off that relationship.  Plus, I feel like Timou's been punished enough, what with every jackanapes reporter out there asking questions about his disappearing girlfriend instead of his new projects.  I ended up feeling sorry for him and disliking Claudette more, which may or may not have been the point.

As for Rosalind, honestly I'm not real sure, but man did her section make me want to visit the Bolivian salt flats. I have a photo taken there, by Gray Malin, and it's incredible how distinct each color is and how saturated it feels. Rosalind's narration really captured that for me, which is one of those things I think looks easy when you have an extraordinary writer, but is really hard to do, to describe an extraordinary scene in words alone.  People on goodreads say it's to give Dan the push to apologize but honestly, if he hadn't figured that out himself at that point, he's too dumb to be married. 

And Theresa is anyone's guess, although maybe to underscore that she was only a sainted figure for Dan, but was a more complex person than that in life? Again, it has the effect of making Dan look, I dunno, dumber, maybe, for idealizing her (not that she's not a good person, but certainly not this two-dimensional cutout he seems to be living with) and I already thought Dan was pretty dumb, so there. And her fated-for-life thing with that random guy who keeps turning up was weird.  I don't even want to get into it, because this is already a treatise, but COME ON.

Anyway, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would in the beginning, definitely felt like the parts with/about Janks kind of dragged, since they seem to end up kind of as a false lead in the ultimate marital disharmony, thought it was well written at least, and ended up not wanting to re-read it at all.

The Waking Land

 The Waking Land

By Callie Bates

Lady Elanna is fiercely devoted to the king who raised her like a daughter. But when he dies under mysterious circumstances, Elanna is accused of his murder—and must flee for her life.

Returning to the homeland of magical legends she has forsaken, Elanna is forced to reckon with her despised, estranged father, branded a traitor long ago. Feeling a strange, deep connection to the natural world, she also must face the truth about the forces she has always denied or disdained as superstition—powers that suddenly stir within her.

But an all-too-human threat is drawing near, determined to exact vengeance. Now Elanna has no choice but to lead a rebellion against the kingdom to which she once gave her allegiance. Trapped between divided loyalties, she must summon the courage to confront a destiny that could tear her apart.

Honestly, I wanted to like this a lot more than I did.  I was not even going to read it at first because I was going to wait for all three of the planned trilogy to come out, that's how much I expected to enjoy it!  But fear not, I am NOT going to be waiting for any more of them.  I read this one and I'm partly through just finished the second one (because I was on a trip and needed something to read) and once that's finished, I am D.O.N.E. with this series. I think, in fact, that The Memory of Fire leaned into even harder the things I didn't like about The Waking Land, so buyer beware.

I did end up picking it for this prompt because it has a bunch of plants on the cover and in fact it's a lot about plants as well. There's a magical earth power in the book, and I know how silly that sounds but I promise it's not as silly as some of the rest of the book.  However, I will note that her power is very conveniently hidden when the book starts, even though she has no control over it, uses it again and again in public, and once she needs it, it is always available to do large or small magic without any training or knowledge whatsoever.  Convenient!

Almost as soon as I got into it I didn't like it very much because it begins with the main character, Elanna, in the court of King Antoine, who is holding her as hostage for her parents good behavior.  Within a chapter, the king is murdered and Elanna is arrested for his murder. Obviously she's rescued since otherwise it would be a very short book and finds her way to the land of her parents. Now you'd think that this would lead to a lot of tension and drama about being torn between two worlds, and the plot description makes it sound like she's really torn between two countries but in fact almost as soon as she gets back to her old homeland she switches allegiances just because they told her that everything she heard growing up with King Antoine was lies. and also she realizes almost instantaneously the three-party system makes more sense than a monarchy. This is why we shouldn't let 19 year olds run for office. They're pretty dumb.

It's even more laughable and doubly ironic when at the end of the book she unilaterally decides to let the daughter of the old King put in exile instead of putting her on trial and potentially executing her even though the new Queen is standing right there and is in complete disagreement with Elanna. Not only is this completely in contravention of everything they've said about checks and balances so far, nowhere in the history of history has letting a potential contender for the throne live been a good idea. In fact in most cases all it does is spur opposition who now has a figurehead behind which to put a rebellion.

SPOILER for the second book: They do this AGAIN in The Memory of Fire and OF COURSE it's going to come back to bite them in the ass in the third book.  But the second book leans even harder into this idea of "We're going to have a revolution and completely overthrow a despotic leader BUT ALSO NO ONE WILL DIE BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO USE VIOLENCE TO OVERTHROW AN UNFAIR SYSTEM ARE JUST AS BAD AS THE SYSTEM, WAAAH.  I have an abhorrence for this rhetoric, as you can tell, as not only is it completely unrealistic and cast the whole thing in a fake-y Disney-fied aura, it's also disingenuous to suggest that an oppressed people become as the oppressors if any attempt to overthrow their shackles results in a death.  There's obviously going overboard, example one being the Troubles in Ireland which had A LOT of civilian casualties, deliberately so, and Ireland being Waking Land's obvious inspiration, but as much as we might praise non-violent protests, these types of activities worked because of world opinion - in the environment that these books are set in, i.e., magical early Roman/British history, there are no televisions, no radios, that will put public pressure on the leaders to stop this.  Also, I need hardly add, that non-violent protests are almost always accompanied with violent protests, because of course you're going to get multiple factions arguing about which method is best to achieve your goals.  This gets to the heart of one of my biggest complaints about The Memory of Fire - even though what'shisname shows up in a country already fomenting revolution, as soon as he appears, everyone just defers to his ideas and plans, even though (in my opinion) his ideas aren't even directed to the same goals, he just wants to save Elanna and Eren.  I'll stop there before I get further sidetracked.  END SPOILER.

In fact I found the character of Elanna to be completely unlikable throughout the book. She's, I suppose, typical for a teenager but you would have hoped that someone with her history and in this setting she would have more sense and be more measured in her actions instead of hmm, just going around to whatever thing she thinks of is an emergency at the time. For example, even though she hasn't seen this man in fifteen years, and has no idea whether he's trustworthy, she demands that they go rescue one of the revolutionaries who was sentenced to be executed even though it could potentially cost more lives and, as we find out in the end of the book, completely ignores her own father who was actually executed. It's like the only things that she thinks about are the ones that are immediately in front of her; there's no layered sense to her understanding. She's mad at her parents until someone tells her that they didn't want her to be taken hostage then she loves them until she finds out that her mother has a relationship with one of the generals on the other side and she blames her mother for colluding with him until the general actually saves her life at which point she forgives her mother for actually passing information that did in fact lead to the death a quite a few of the revolutionaries. Some of that was pretty obvious but she has to have all of it pointed out for her by other people. And to bring it back to that initial suggestion that she would be torn between two worlds, once she finds out that King Antoine may not have been the kindly, charitably minded king she thought he was (leaving aside, also, how ridiculous she thought that in the first place, since he LITERALLY KIDNAPPED HER AT GUNPOINT) she doesn't give anymore thought to him or regret to his death.  Everything is black and white, no gray, and in a book that has such promise, a lack of shaded characters is a serious detriment.

I'm not going to discuss the romance too much except to say that I thought it was silly and improbable and definitely a distraction at a time when she had more important things to think about. And, now that I've read the second book, I also despise what'shisname, who is an absolute ASSHAT in book two.  The whole thing is just making me upset all over again.  In The Waking Land she spends all this time flirting with and creating drama over this guy, telling him her parents engaged her to someone else for political purposes, but she really loves only what'shisname, and it is so junior high, I can't even.  Let us move on.

Here's an eerily prescient portion of my review, which was written before I read book two: "The part with the mountain people was also frustrating, because at no point did anyone say 'If you don't help us then we'll both die so your options are: a king we know will kill you, or one who may potentially be on your side.' Tough decision, hmmmm. If this is the level of political machinations that this author can manage I'm not sure I want to read the next book, which is set at court rather than on the battlefield."  Yeah, that was borne out.  I hate to be so cranky, but this premise had such promise and it was squandered.  I will also make a final note that fantasy books clearly based on western Europe in shape, history, and mores allow authors to use shorthand in establishing the world, and it can be a serious crutch when, like here, the author does not spend enough time developing the fantasy world and relies too heavily on our own understanding of history to do the work.

O6: A book with a plant in the title or on the cover.

Fairy Princesses: Double Header Review Day

Darkfever, by Karen Marie Moning

MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman. Or so she thinks…until something extraordinary happens.

When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae….

As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future. As she begins to close in on the truth, the ruthless Vlane–an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women–closes in on her. And as the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac’s true mission becomes clear: find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book–because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control of the very fabric of both worlds in their hands…. (Amazon)

I have been somewhat out of sorts of late; in the kind of fey mood where I pick up a book, only to put it down again 20 pages later, and unable to read anything besides old and worn favorites. I have also been playing a lot of games on my kindle instead. BUT! I recently downloaded a book which seemed like it had a lot of potential (It was marked down to $1.99) and a book I requested from the library several months ago (no exaggeration) finally came in, so I got back on that horse, and well, here I am!

All of that was an introduction to letting you know that I was displeased, although I am generous enough to say that it may, possible, be a result of the mood, and not the books. And then again, maybe not. Let’s sharpen our claws!

First up was Darkfever. This is the first in a series, about a girl whose sister dies while studying abroad in Dublin. Given the mysterious and horrific circumstances of her death, our heroine, MacKayla, is incensed when the police declare that they have no leads and are closing the case. She sets off on her own to investigate, and winds up in over her head, entangling herself in the world of the Fae, and in a search for an object of power, a long-lost book which holds the key to the end of the world. It sounds super-fun, if not the most thought-provoking treatise in the world, right? WRONG. It’s a good thing this was on my kindle, because I was tempted to throw the book a few times. I literally rolled my eyes when I was reading it. Here, in alphabetical order, is my list of complaints:

1. MacKayla
2. MacKayla
3. MacKayla
4. MacKayla

Like, holy crap, I really wanted her to die. In my opinion, hoping the heroine dies is not the mark of a hugely successful character. Things I hated about her: the way that she always talks about what she wears, and how beautiful she is. That’s not a joke. At one point, while trying to disguise herself, she says that she could never be ugly, but she’s going to shoot for average. And her attitude! She makes one mention of how grief must have turned her mind to mush, but her actions and behavior are systematically ridiculous. She is in the midst of trying to figure out the cause of her sister’s brutal murder, so she wanders around town, asking people about the very thing that got her sister killed, and then shacks up with the first person who knows anything about what she’s talking about. My reaction to that would be, “So this sinsar dubh that my sister mentions in her last, desperate attempt to warn me – you know all about it? And you followed me to my hostel and spied on me, and told me that you’d be willing to kill for it? I think maybe I will not take you up on that invitation to stay at your creepy bookstore, on the edge of an abandoned city block.”

Honestly, you’d have to be pretty stupid to trust this guy (“Jericho Barrons” Don’t even get me started), and yet that is exactly what Mac appears to do – she tells him all about her sister, and the clues she finds, and lets him tote her around and use her as a magical sniffer-dog. I guess maybe that could be a strategy too, though, like, hey, if he is my sister’s murderer, I’m going to pretend to be in cahoots with him, so he thinks we’re on the same team, and doesn’t kill me, too! Except that Mac is not so much “pretending” as she “going along with everything he says, even if he gives no explanation as to his own motivations and goals, and generally keeps her in the dark about everything.”

Oh, but Mac is an individual, a spunky, fun, feisty woman. You can tell by the way that she disobeys like, the one obviously sensible order from Mr. Barrons to dress appropriately and instead wears a long peach skirt and rose colored fuzzy sweater to a vampire’s lair. Because she is an Independent Lady. Not only is this ho-bag tagging along with some random dude who has given her no reason to trust him and about a hundred reasons not to, she’s also ignoring any good advice he’s giving her. Which is to say: when your sister has been murdered, and you’re looking for her killer, and you’ve been sucked into an underground world with magical beings, most of whom seem to want you for nefarious purposes, or just plain want to kill you, and you’re going around stealing priceless artifacts from very bad men, don’t you think the very last thing you should be doing is dressing like you’re rainbow brite at a mime party? As in, YOU’RE DRAWING A LOT OF ATTENTION TO YOURSELF, GENIUS.

That’s not some awesome “damn the man, grrrl power” moment. That’s asinine. That is. . . I am still angry about it.

Moving on: Mac’s assumptions. Someone needs to sit this girl down and have a long talk about how when you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME. Or, really, in this case, she is making an ASS out of HER and HER. And sort of me, a little, because I am the fool who’s still reading. There is a point, in the story, in which she says, after seeing her protector walk through an alley without getting harassed by these bad-guy Shade-creatures, “There were really only two possibilities I could think of: either Barrons was lying to me about the Shades, or he’d struck some kind of dark bargain with the life-sucking Fae. Whichever it was, I finally had my answer to whether or not I could trust him. That would be a great, big NOT.”

Okay, first of all, now you realize you shouldn’t be trusting him? Not when he put you in a wrestling hold and bruised your ribs? Or choked you? Or how about the fact that you have no idea who this guy is, because he has given you no background information? Or the conversation you overheard in which his – uh, sex toy/bookseller? – tells him to stop using you? No, those all seem perfectly trustworthy.

Second of all, those are the only two possibilities? I feel like Murray, in Clueless, when Cher and Dionne are talking about Christian, and how Cher almost had sex with him, and he goes, “Yo, are you bitches blind or something? Your man Christian is a cake boy.” Yo, Mac, are you blind or something? There are a lot more possibilities than that. Liiiiiiiike, maybe the Shades know this guy is stronger than them and they don’t want to get into a fight and die. Or he’s wearing the magical equivalent of a protective hamster ball. Or these are his employees, and they’re kinda dim about the whole “not eating guests” thing. It could be anything! Sherlock Holmes, you are not.

As I said, this is the first book in the series, and I could not believe that people would actually recommend it, but upon reading the reviews, the consensus is that in the second book, MacKayla doesn’t display the same dimwitted fuckery that she does in this one. Although, obviously, that’s a pretty low bar to meet. And yet, the power of the reviews is such that I am almost tempted to get the second one and see if it improves as much as people say. Like, one million happy readers can’t be wrong. Can they?

It’s such a terrible temptation – MacKayla has a lot of potential to be awesome, and not the shallow dipshit she was, and I’m already sort of swayed, from reading the prologue to the second book, which mentions all the super cool things, without all the not so bright stuff.

P.S. I totally read the second book (Faefever or Moonfever or Bloodfever or Kittenfever or Clownfever or some such nonsense. I can't keep them straight) since I wrote this review, and it's true - Mac does turn out to be much more awesome in the second book. However, there's apparently some sort of gang rape scene in the third, so I have no idea how Mac continues to develop as a person, since I am in the mood to not read about that.

The Ordinary Princess, by Mary Margaret Kaye

Along with Wit, Charm, Health, and Courage, Princess Amy of Phantasmorania receives a special fairy christening gift: Ordinariness. Unlike her six beautiful sisters, she has brown hair and freckles, and would rather have adventures than play the harp, embroider tapestries . . . or become a Queen. When her royal parents try to marry her off, Amy runs away and, because she's so ordinary, easily becomes the fourteenth assistant kitchen maid at a neighboring palace. And there . . . much to everyone's surprise . . . she meets a prince just as ordinary (and special) as she is!(Amazon)

The second book I read was The Ordinary Princess, because there’s nothing like reading about being mind-controlled to strip in public and present yourself for rape to get you in the mood for a children’s book! Just kidding, I was super titillated by that section of Darkfever. It’s like Ms. Moning read my mind.

So, movingonbeforeyoustarttobelieveme, The Ordinary Princess! I didn’t like it. It sounds sweet – a princess is given the gift of ordinariness, and she sets out to find her fortune. But it ostensibly celebrated ordinary people and pursuits, while giving them lives that were anything but. Look, I get that peeling potatoes can be a refreshing change of pace from the bright lights of the paparazzo, but maybe try working for more than two months before you start singing the praises of the proletariat, sister. If Princess Amy were truly ordinary, then she would have really been up the creek when she gets fired.

Let me put this into perspective for you: Amy, while picnicking one day, falls in with a group of young ladies who tell her that her days playing in the countryside are numbered, since the royal family is importing a dragon to entice young knights to fight for the privilege of the princess’ hand (and get shanghaied into marriage before they get a good look at her ordinary face). They tell her this, and add, “Ho-hum, I suppose that’s nice for them, but if only this dragon weren’t going to single-handedly destroy the countryside and eat all the livestock.” Wow, I like that attitude: Yes, the rulers of my kingdom are going to ravage the country and ruin our lives, but it’s all in an effort to get their daughter married off in some sort of underhanded scheme, so whatever.

And so Amy leaves town, and lives in the woods for awhile (why not), until her clothing falls apart and her fairy godmother tells her she needs to work, so she can get paid, and buy a dress. Amy toddles off, and gets a job right away as maid in the castle, and loves it, for whatever reason. Here is the thing, her godmother asks her, “Isn’t it great to be ordinary, isn’t it soooooo much better than being pretty?” And Amy is all, “Yeah, it’s the best!” But Amy’s been working all of six weeks at that point. That is less than half of a summer vacation. And when Amy (rightfully) gets fired, she has a fall-back position of being a fucking princess. So, I think she’s out of her gourd. Plus, how could anyone get behind a job that requires a year’s wages for a single common dress? No, really, they pay her 2 pfennigs a week, and a dress is 100 pfennigs, so she’d have to work for a year to get a new dress. And frankly, a dress you wear everyday is not going to last much more than a year. So Amy is in a job that basically pays for the clothes on her back and nothing else. What is she going to do when she’s too old to wash dishes, and carry pots, and clean things? Who’s going to want to be ordinary then, huh?

P.S. These reviews may be somewhat scattershot, since I wrote them in a fit of pique (obviously) and then went about my business for awhile, and didn't bother to edit them for posting. But I stand by every word, even if I can't remember what they were.