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A review by trin
Spooky Little Girl by Laurie Notaro
1.0
Oh, this is bad. Familiar, old-fashioned, college creative writing course bad. The plot makes no sense, the characterization is thin or muddled, and the prose ranges from workmanlike to borderline incompetent. For example, here is one page (p. 239) of dialogue attributions:
Isis explained
Nola gave in
Nola said sharply
Isis investigated (this one’s totally my favorite!)
Isis continued
Nola confirmed
the psychic requested
Nola replied
Isis queried
“I think someone needed a more thorough editor,” Trin said. But anyway, the plot! Our heroine is Lucy Fisher—supposedly a free spirit, although when we meet her she’s living in a dull split level, engaged to a dull man, and working as a dental hygienist. (What a wild woman!) The book opens with Lucy coming back from a Hawaiian vacation on which she’s spent her entire inheritance and had a mostly miserable time to discover that her fiancé has kicked her out of the house with no explanation. The next morning, she is fired from her job for stealing and for failing a drug test. Then when she goes to stay with her sister to get away from it all, she is immediately hit by a bus and dies.
I don’t think I am out of line in suggesting that this is, perhaps, a little much? Especially considering that the plot of the book does not involve the gods being angry at Lucy and taking their vengeance upon her.
No, instead she has to go to ghost school, where many chapters are required for Lucy and her fellow students to learn a bunch of skills that Patrick Swayze figured out over the course of a fun montage. Lucy picks up all the stereotypical haunting tricks, and is even given the option of getting kitted out in whatever ghost gear might suit her fancy (woman in white? old-timey hooker? the choice is yours!). However, she is also instructed that she’s not supposed to frighten whoever she’s sent to haunt, she’s supposed to help them. If she scares them too much, she could get sucked into the white light, which is actually a portal to eternal torment. Then why is she being taught how to scare people, one might ask? Beats me!
Wait, no it doesn’t: it’s because without this sequence, the book would have no middle. We’d have to rush right on to the final third, wherein Lucy mildly torments and is mildly tormented by her personality-free ex-fiancé’s cartoonishly awful new girlfriend, who is also the woman who got Lucy fired (...right). Then the book ends and Lucy finally gets to move on to The State, which sounds just like Earth only you’re dead and get to eat as much brownie batter as you want. (This is the same State, by the way, that was frequently claimed to be “indescribable” to anyone who asked.) Was Lucy supposed to learn anything from this? Isn’t she supposed to be some sort of higher being now? I’m sorry, but I can’t trust any “higher being” whose idea of paradise involves raw brownie batter. Cookie dough maybe, but I’ve dipped many the wooden spoon and trust me, raw brownie batter is not worth dying for.
Sorry, this is probably a much more scathing review than this book truly deserves: it’s bad, but it’s not offensive—or at least no more offensive than any other bad published book. However, I read it as a favor to a friend, and he’s going to ask me about it, and I am going to have to equivocate so much. Best get the brutal honesty out of my system now, then, before I have to start practicing all the phrases I used in my actual college creative writing class, where we weren’t allowed to say anything mean.
Ahem.
“Gosh, Notaro sure was trying for something interesting with this!”
Isis explained
Nola gave in
Nola said sharply
Isis investigated (this one’s totally my favorite!)
Isis continued
Nola confirmed
the psychic requested
Nola replied
Isis queried
“I think someone needed a more thorough editor,” Trin said. But anyway, the plot! Our heroine is Lucy Fisher—supposedly a free spirit, although when we meet her she’s living in a dull split level, engaged to a dull man, and working as a dental hygienist. (What a wild woman!) The book opens with Lucy coming back from a Hawaiian vacation on which she’s spent her entire inheritance and had a mostly miserable time to discover that her fiancé has kicked her out of the house with no explanation. The next morning, she is fired from her job for stealing and for failing a drug test. Then when she goes to stay with her sister to get away from it all, she is immediately hit by a bus and dies.
I don’t think I am out of line in suggesting that this is, perhaps, a little much? Especially considering that the plot of the book does not involve the gods being angry at Lucy and taking their vengeance upon her.
No, instead she has to go to ghost school, where many chapters are required for Lucy and her fellow students to learn a bunch of skills that Patrick Swayze figured out over the course of a fun montage. Lucy picks up all the stereotypical haunting tricks, and is even given the option of getting kitted out in whatever ghost gear might suit her fancy (woman in white? old-timey hooker? the choice is yours!). However, she is also instructed that she’s not supposed to frighten whoever she’s sent to haunt, she’s supposed to help them. If she scares them too much, she could get sucked into the white light, which is actually a portal to eternal torment. Then why is she being taught how to scare people, one might ask? Beats me!
Wait, no it doesn’t: it’s because without this sequence, the book would have no middle. We’d have to rush right on to the final third, wherein Lucy mildly torments and is mildly tormented by her personality-free ex-fiancé’s cartoonishly awful new girlfriend, who is also the woman who got Lucy fired (...right). Then the book ends and Lucy finally gets to move on to The State, which sounds just like Earth only you’re dead and get to eat as much brownie batter as you want. (This is the same State, by the way, that was frequently claimed to be “indescribable” to anyone who asked.) Was Lucy supposed to learn anything from this? Isn’t she supposed to be some sort of higher being now? I’m sorry, but I can’t trust any “higher being” whose idea of paradise involves raw brownie batter. Cookie dough maybe, but I’ve dipped many the wooden spoon and trust me, raw brownie batter is not worth dying for.
Sorry, this is probably a much more scathing review than this book truly deserves: it’s bad, but it’s not offensive—or at least no more offensive than any other bad published book. However, I read it as a favor to a friend, and he’s going to ask me about it, and I am going to have to equivocate so much. Best get the brutal honesty out of my system now, then, before I have to start practicing all the phrases I used in my actual college creative writing class, where we weren’t allowed to say anything mean.
Ahem.
“Gosh, Notaro sure was trying for something interesting with this!”