So I suspect that I, being a iddle aged straight white guy, may not have been the intended audience for this book. Having said that, boy am I glad I decided to take a chance and read this book. I had never heard of it, depsite it's apparently having been made into a movie that I now have to find and watch. I found it at the library while looking to see what Silvia Moreno-Garcia books they had after finishing Silver Nitrate and this was two shelves up. And it actually complimented my experience with Silver Nitrate in a weird way. It's a decade older, and doesn't have any ghosts of Nazi occultists to terrorize the girl at the heart of the story. But it does take place in the 90's and features a girl who lives in (what is to me at least) a foreign country. It also deals heavily in one of my passions that was given short shrift in Silver Nitrate, music.
I'm going to be blunt, if you're bothered by depictions of teenage girls masturbating and exploring their sexuality, you won't like this book. Also, if that statement makes you want to read the book for jerk off material, it's probably not going to scrtach that itch either. It's a frank book, shockingly so at times. It's a funny book about a girl figuring out who she is in a world that doesn't care much about girls. It's also a book about not giving in to cynicism, and about having the bravery to love the things you love be they movie musicals or pop music. And now I'm going to say one of the wildest things I've ever said, but I stand by it. This book is what the movie Sullivan's Travels would be if Sullivan's Travels was about a girl who is a chronic masturbator from the UK who writes about music instead of about a male movie director from Hollywood.
I know there are a lot of things the author was trying to get across, about the issues girls have to deal with growing up, about class struggles. And maybe it is because I am a straight(ish) white guy, but the one that came across most strongly to me was the one about not giving in to cynicism in an effort to seem cooler. To remain able to unabashedly love the things you love, and to proclaim that love to the world. I hate the phrase gulty pleasure. If something gives you pleasure you should not feel guitly about it. Art is art and is highly subjective. Every day on the internet I come across someone who says something like "I've never even seen a Star Wars movie" in an effort to seem more culturally refined than we mere popcorn munchers who don't have the decent taste to not be entertained by a rollicking space opera. But instead of being impressed, I always doubt the veracity of these statements, and honestly feel a little sorry for the person if they are true because they are missing out on a really good time.
Anyway, back to the book. The story is about a teenage girl who thinks she may have made a mistake that will get her family kicked off welfare benefits. She decides that it's up to her to save the family, so she remakes herself as wild child Dolly Wilde and goes to work for a rock magazine writing about music. She meets and falls for a rising star, but this doesn't stop her from exploring several sexual escapades in his absence. She often goes too far in trying to make up for her imagined faults, something I bet most of us can relate to. The best parts of the book are with her and her brother. In fact there's a whiole side story of her brother coming to terms with being gay that plays out just beyond the periphery that I think would make an intersting book of its own.
Speaking of Star Wars, the few gripes I have about the book are little pop culture things it gets wrong like saying Han Solo kisses Princess Leia before they swing across a chasm on a rope. Of course it is the Princess who kisses Luke before the two of them swing across whilst Han is busy running from Storm Troopers with Chewie in another part of the Death Star altogether. This is of course of no importance to the story at all, but for a pop culture obssessed girl to get something like this wrong seem out of character, and there are a few such minor instances. This minor quibble is the inly real criticism I can launch against the book though, which is very entertaining. Seeing Dolly disassociate so that she can become a more accomodating sexual plaything for her male partners is somehow both heartbreaking and funny, but mostly heartbreaking in that she doesn't even see yet that it is heartbreaking. Seeing her take up habits that repulse her just to fit in says so much about our need for conformity even when we're trying to stand out. This book was very much a surprising pleasure to read and I look forward to watching the movie adaptation and reading the sequel that has since come out.
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