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ow200 's review for:
The View Was Exhausting
by Mikaella Clements, Onjuli Datta
A frothy, pacy read. And, as romcoms go, this one nails the manufactured crises and separations between the two protagonists that undergird the genre. Not just misunderstandings for these love birds, no; full on PR and tabloid scandals with career-ruining implications!
I enjoyed - and also tired of - the references to online stan culture, found the idea of navigating a public profile as a famous person a wonky metaphor for more general experiences of selfhood, and wondered at the writers’ obsession with ‘belt loops,’ which are explicitly grabbed, hooked and generally toyed with no fewer than three times in the narrative.
It also joins a series of novels I’ve read in recent years that are intent on unpicking the idea of ‘celebrity.’ Swing Time by Zadie Smith and Sally Rooney’s latest jump to mind but there are bound to be loads of others. The writers of The View…, however, are distinctly un-famous, unlike the two wunderkind, Zadie and Sally, and so the default to autobiographical reading that it’s so easy to make is circumvented.
Otherwise [insert comments on its sorta mid-brow accessibility and thoughtfulness, attachment to the glamour of celebrity and something something something]. End of review!
I enjoyed - and also tired of - the references to online stan culture, found the idea of navigating a public profile as a famous person a wonky metaphor for more general experiences of selfhood, and wondered at the writers’ obsession with ‘belt loops,’ which are explicitly grabbed, hooked and generally toyed with no fewer than three times in the narrative.
It also joins a series of novels I’ve read in recent years that are intent on unpicking the idea of ‘celebrity.’ Swing Time by Zadie Smith and Sally Rooney’s latest jump to mind but there are bound to be loads of others. The writers of The View…, however, are distinctly un-famous, unlike the two wunderkind, Zadie and Sally, and so the default to autobiographical reading that it’s so easy to make is circumvented.
Otherwise [insert comments on its sorta mid-brow accessibility and thoughtfulness, attachment to the glamour of celebrity and something something something]. End of review!