The blondes

Meh. All over this book. Meh, meh, meh. I dunno: When I see Margaret Atwood saying, ‘WOW!' on the book's cover, I'm led to believe this will be a good feminist work. So sue me. And the premise made it sound like it would be.

Nope.

Sure, this book technically passes the Bechdel test. But it does feminism no favors. Most of the main characters are poopy toward each other, lying to each other, and–in the case of Hazel and Grace, or even Grace and Kovacs–jealous of each other. Our main character–who seems like the author's Mary Sue, but I can't be completely certain of this–doesn't believe in any female sisterhood. If Hazel were meant to be a character a reader DOESN'T like, I would say this makes sense and is a key character trait. But she's meant to be likable, it seems to me, so this just makes her more anti-female to me, which is annoying. I already don't really care for Hazel.

This whole plot is contingent upon–wait for it–a young post-grad who has an affair with her professor (whom she probably has a fling with because of what I like to call guru-syndrome). Yawn. Can we say trite? And somehow, they are too stupid to use condoms ever. That is believable, I suppose.

There is also the manic pixie-ish Moira, who is just butted out of the novel altogether a little past the middle, so that she seems rather pointless. And then there is Larissa, who is rich and blond and amazing with a great family. But for reasons not completely explained, she becomes a trainwreck in the most conventional way when she somehow loses her family. And she becomes something of a threat to our heroine, so our heroine steals her car and ditches her. Because, really, our heroine sucks and is boring and vapid and jealous of beautiful women.

Oh, right. She's a frizzy-haired ginger who's chubby. Another yawn.

Our author also seems to think really blonde blondes exist only on the coasts, because the Midwest of America and the Plains of Canada are virtually safe havens. I suppose because blonde denotes wealth and power, and the middle of North America is hicksville filled with brunettes? (Also, redheadedness is more related to brownhairedness, isn't it?) Apparently, like many big giant city people, she has no bloody clue of anything outside New York. I mean, gosh, she's even forgetting vanity steroids cases like Chicago; or that Missouri has two of the larger Midwestern cities (KC and STL); and that we are not one big gigantic farm. ALSO, she's apparently unaware of the many German and Scandinavian immigrants who settled in the Midwest. Many of whom were blonde.

Also, I find it tiring that, as a white woman, Hazel must continually point out race, particularly in the books few very minor Asian characters, all of whom speak in very choppy English, even when they work at Starbuck's.

And Hazel. All she does is be pregnant and want to terminate the child the entire book. I'm fine with that choice. But she's bloody dull, and I don't appreciate her being the view through which we see a completely improbable plague of blondes, even DYED blondes.

Oh my gosh, the more I write, the less I like this book. But I don't feel it's bad enough for a one-star review. Schultz is a fair writer, even if not the best; she has some good turns of phrase. And I like Grace. I wish we could have read a book about Grace or Larissa or even Moira, rather than lame, poopy Hazel.