Confession time: I have a weakness for plays like this - dramatic, small-cast, intense family plays, usually set in very limited locations. When I disConfession time: I have a weakness for plays like this - dramatic, small-cast, intense family plays, usually set in very limited locations. When I discovered Neil LaBute's new play was also about twins, I was desperate to read it, even though I knew I might not like what I found.
This play is nowhere near as surprising as it wants to be. It's also horrifyingly misogynistic. It's a two-character play, between a pair of middle-aged twins - Betty, a liberal arts college professor, and Bobby, a working-class carpenter. It's a cliche of writing that I experience very little in real life (I am a twin) that twins have to have alliterative and usually similar sounding names (Charles and Camilla in The Secret History and Bobby and Betty, among many others). Family secrets come out, and here we must return to the point of misogyny.
I am used to twincest always being a plot point in every piece of fiction about twins, ever. Neil LaBute takes the dynamic's probably most worn out trope, as it becomes increasingly obvious that Bobby loves Betty perhaps a little too much. Yet Bobby is the most sympathetic character. LaBute's "depth" completely deserts him here; he expects us to be shocked that the inarticulate, swaggering Bobby would in fact be a pretty decent guy with a deep love for his sister. Betty, on the other hand, is pretentious, needy, and has a serious history of sleeping with much older, married men, and also younger men now that she's married.
This is a cliche, but perhaps it's a cliche for a reason. The dynamic between the twins, however, is as relentlessly predictable as the dark and stormy night on which they meet again, only much darker and more woman-hating. Bobby's skin-crawling "love" for his sister is treated as something near-heroic and redemptive. Betty, on the other hand, is a preening and extremely manipulative narcissist, not above stringing along Bobby's incestuous feelings for her to implicate him in crimes.
It's not inherently misogynistic that Betty is a villain; what's misogynistic is that her character is so thin, so underdeveloped and predictable, that it seems to be her mere gender that makes her a compulsive married man stealer - and, even worse, she's an intellectual, intelligent, accomplished woman, while her brother, despite having been looked down on his whole life because he's not her intellectual equal, is in fact an essentially decent guy. Never mind that having the hots for your sister is disgusting. It's still more honourable than being a woman with sexual desire!
But - and I don't feel good about this - I was gripped by it. I think it would probably be a great play to see onstage, if you could find actors you were fans of, because Bobby and Betty may be poorly-written, sexually offensive stereotypes, but they are also great opportunities. I was captivated until the very last minute to see what would happen between Bobby and Betty and whether their "bond" would survive, even though I did feel like I needed a shower afterwards. ...more
I had high hopes for this one. I was in the mood for a fun guilty pleasure, a kind of Veronica Mars meets Gossip Girl. Being a twin myself, though notI had high hopes for this one. I was in the mood for a fun guilty pleasure, a kind of Veronica Mars meets Gossip Girl. Being a twin myself, though not an identical one, I love a good twin-switch mystery. I was prepared to accept a little stupidity, a few plot holes, for the sake of a fun soap opera.
But The Lying Game disappointed me even by my fairly low standards. It just felt so...cheap. All the characters were flat clichés - not in itself a bad thing - sure we've all seen the dumb jock or the sensitive male poet before, but as long as there are a few good quips or some genuine emotion, I can't say stereotyping bothers me too much. But, in The Lying Game, there was nothing but these paper-thin characters and a paper-thin plot. Honestly, I should have known not to read this when saw that Shepard had THREE MORE BOOKS already planned in this one series. Seriously, from what I've seen, this could have been one book. Maybe two. You know those ten/fifteen minutes at the start of Law & Order episodes, where the detective characters spend a few scenes running around after red herrings until we get into the real meat of the plot? THAT was the entire plot of The Lying Game. The entire plot was one. long. red. herring.
Now, red herrings are a staple of the mystery genre. I could have coped with it if there was some emotional core here. And, call me optimistic, but I thought this plot came with one built-in. Sure, the idea of a magic long-lost twin sister who just happens to track you down on the day you're murdered is totally ridiculous. But I was willing to be forgiving because it seemed like there was so much potential conflict built in here. The epigraph - "we must be careful about who we pretend to be, because we are who we pretend to be" - got my hopes up even further. Emma, the long-lost twin, was a foster kid who'd got the rough end of the deal her whole life; Sutton, the murder victim, was an entitled bitch who had the luck to get adopted by a rich, coddling family. Class conflict! Identity crisis! I thought it was all here. But Shepard managed to suck all the life out of this interesting plot with totally bland, vanilla characters sapped of any kind of emotion, briefly sketched. Nothing should be too interesting or complex in The Lying Game.
And the plot holes...dear GOD, the plot holes. For such a serial nitpicker, I'm actually not good with plot holes. (I know!) They almost always slide under my radar if they're papered up with good enough writing. And, to be honest, I'm somewhat willing to excuse them for the sake of the story (e.g. "New Girl.") But all of the plot holes in The Lying Game - of which there were many - made me grind my teeth with frustration. I understand that there's a difference between characters making stupid decision and plot holes, but exhibit A: Emma, foster kid, has just more or less fell into Sutton's life. She's decided that she can't imitate her dead twin sister and she's determined to go to the police to get it straightened out. Only the video of Sutton's death has been deleted from the Net and it turns out Sutton has a bit of a reputation for lying to the police. Whenever Emma tries to explain the whole long-lost-twin thing, people laugh at her, assuming it's another of Sutton's ridiculous jokes. But...Emma has a life of her own. Why doesn't Emma call her best friend Alex to vouch for her, or her ex-foster mother? Why doesn't Emma ever show anyone in Sutton's family her (Emma's) Facebook page? And the most annoying thing is that this could have been easily covered up. I know that a lot of people don't like it when, in reviews, reviewers say that "it would have been much better if X had happened..." because the primary job of a reviewer is to write about what is actually in front of them.
But TLG is full of ridiculous moments and plot holes that had me going "why doesn't Emmas just...?" BUT they could have easily been avoided. Why doesn't Emma try harder to show them that she's not Sutton? Well, maybe she wants to be Sutton. Why was Sutton adopted and Emma wasn't? Why doesn't Emma have any memories of Sutton? Was Sutton adopted when she was a baby? Why would Becky have Sutton adopted as a baby but not Emma? The list goes on and on. Nothing can be too complex or interesting in Shepard's simplistic, bland world. There's no edge, no reason to care. Emma's emotions are simple and written down just like, "Emma was nervous." "Emma was happy." "Emma felt a twinge of guilt." All writers do this to an extent - but there was just no involvement with our protaganist. There's the sensitive male poet and the dumb jock, like I mentioned, but there's absolutely no chemistry or life infused within them. There's also the jealous little sister who's desperate to have her older sister's life. Well, maybe she killed her so that she could have it? Ugh...not only are the characters totally unoriginal, so is the plotline. Everything you've seen here, you've seen a million times before. And done better, too.
The most annoying thing about TLG is the perspective it's told in. Sutton is dead and narrates in a kind of beyond-the-grave first-person voiceover, though God knows why because she can't remember ANYTHING about her old life except the occasional flash. Emma on the other hand is told totally in third person - almost as if Sutton was watching her, except not, because if Sutton was watching her, why would she be able to hear what Emma is thinking? (There's no hint of that story of twins being psychic.) There are no chapter breaks, or even line breaks. The story jerks backwards and forwards from Sutton's first-person whining about how she can't remember anything and she wishes she could (which is all very, very convenient) to Emma third-personly wandering around trying to make sense of Sutton's life. This 'dual POV' thing just felt totally, totally cheap and lazy. It's almost as if Shepard couldn't be bothered planning this book properly and, whenever she realised that she had to communicate A BIG REVELATION to her audience, she didn't bother getting Emma to do any kind of detective work (which, y'know, she's supposed to be doing!). Instead, she just flip-flopped back to Sutton and got Sutton to show us through one of her very convenient 'flashes' of her past life.
Everyone is annoying, nobody is interesting and, no, I won't be coming back for Book 2. The most frustrating thing about this book is how goddamn lazy it is. Listen up, YA writers! Don't bother treating your readers as if they have any scrap of intelligence. Just s p e l l everything out for them, stick to your clichés and sap every hint of life/originality out of everything. That will get you a bestselling series! ...more
I might be over marking this book slightly, but it was just the perfect book for me right now: a light, fun, fluffy book with a little myster3.5 stars
I might be over marking this book slightly, but it was just the perfect book for me right now: a light, fun, fluffy book with a little mystery. It's not to be taken seriously and, yes, if you've ever read chick lit, you know exactly what to expect: interfering mother, sweet tooth, fleeting love interest. But it's a sweet book (and what can I say? I looooove cookies) with a good heroine and a plot that actually surprised me. My one and only quibble would be that the denouement (which surprised me!) was over far too quickly and seemed a little too neat and simplistic. Still, I enjoyed reading this one....more
"Kitty Kitty", by Michele Jaffe, is a really mixed bag. On one hand, it's really funny in places, generally fun, light-hearted and fast-paced. It's al"Kitty Kitty", by Michele Jaffe, is a really mixed bag. On one hand, it's really funny in places, generally fun, light-hearted and fast-paced. It's also incredibly well-paced, in that there are genuine twists and turns at the each of every chapter and there is lots of genuine imagination and creativity. However, the imagination and creativity manifests in a way that is sorta over-quirky, in that practically all the characters talk the same kind of witty, OTT way. For instance, there is constant footnotes, references to characters in quirky ways like "Dadzilla", "Sherri", "Tyger's Eye*" (the star is silent) and "Sapphyre" (not Sapphire, which Jaffe obviously thought funny enough to repeat every five pages. Jasmine is a good heroine, though she's somewhat undermined by the fact that every one of her friends are quirks with legs, which also makes her feel like a quirk with long legs while reading, and not even a particularly unique one. However, she is funny, self-depracating and refreshingly short on the whininess.
I felt conflicted about what is obviously the overarching plot in these "Kitty" books, which is the Mysterious Death of Jas's mother when she was very young. This is very intriguing, but only shows up veeeeery sporadically in the novel and, even when it appeared, it wasn't remotely developed. Jas gets a few mysterious e-mails and her dad promises to tell her 'something' about her mother's death when they return to L.A. - which Jaffe all leaves for the third book, despite the fact that this third book has not materialised yet and it says on her website that "IT IS NOT SCHEDULED YET." So, great. Even though both "Kitty" books came out in quick succession of one another, this appears like an ongoing series which has just been...dropped? Gahhh. I feel really irritated by this because the mystery of Jas's mother's death is the only part of the novel that got me really, really invested, because I loved how Jas dealt with her more emotional moments for such a quirky character.
I even quite liked the 'romance' between Jack and Jas, though it pretty much takes a backseat for her weird dalliance with the sleazy/sexy Italian, Max, mainly due to Jas's interesting voice and treatment of it. But, overall, this book suffered from serious CHARACTER SOUP. We appear to have our heroine's sidekicks introduced in the first thirtyish pages - her cousin and her cousin's best friend, both of whom she dislikes so much, she calls them the Evil Hench-Twins - but then her three best friends pop up from L.A. and it just becomes a little overcrowded. Okay, really overcrowded. We now have five sidekicks even though it's blatantly obvious that Jas only needs two. And, honestly, if I hadn't read "Bad Kitty" (about a thousand years ago so I can't really compare the two), I would think that Jaffe created this mad plot and then these totally implausible characters to go along with it. Tom is apparently a mastaaaah (Jas's voice) of all things lock-picky and stuff, which is very convenient for Jas's detective work, but so is Roxy, Tom's twin sister, so Tom gets totally pushed to the back and is pretty much the third wheel throughout. Polly's quirk is the only one that gets real plot grounding - her fashion talent - but it's so overheated (like a lot of "Kitty Kitty", in all honesty), it gave me a bit of a headache.
"Kitty Kitty" is very implausible. This is not, in itself, a problem. I didn't read this book for a gritty, realistic picture of Venice. I read this for entertainment and giggles (both of which it provided consistently and well). And, so, even though I could accept the ridiculous way that Jas talks her way into Prada, and into a dead millionaire's home without comment, when it finally came time for the mystery to be revealed, I was left totally confused and feeling very stupid. I'm not quite sure how much of this I missed but, in the end, it turns out that Suspect #1 and Suspect #2 are NOT the killers, but Not Suspect #3 is. How did Jas know that Not Suspect was M.? I'm not sure. Also, if #1 and #2 were not the killers, why did they react so goddamn violently? #1 is not the killer and apparently was totally set up by #3 but still decides to kick Jas in the face when she discovers his next 'victim' (who has in fact staged this and set themselves up as the victim)? And apparently he's a total nice guy at the end and not remotely a creep or a violent asshole? Also, #2 is not the killer, but COMES AT JAS WIELDING A KNIFE with no motivation, until Thshe is 'saved' by #3. #3 is not planning to kill #2 until #3 makes it look like #2 and Jas were having an affair and then #3 can kill #2 six months later and stage it like a suicide. And at no point in the next six months will #2 happen to mention the fact that he and Jas were not having an affair? And what did The House That Kills article have to do with anything? There's a difference between a wild, implausible plot and a just plain stupid one. This difference was plain to see here. The ending becomes very rushed to the point where it is almost incoherent. I was really glad that it didn't turn out to be a certain somebody, which it almost was, and when the twist showed up, I was glad, yeah, but the solution was just so clichéd and rushed that I don't know how Jas figured out half of the things she supposedly did.
This book is also not for nitpickers. It is for anyone who can suspend their belief - preferably from the ceiling - but also their worry about cultural stereotypes. Every stereotype about Venice is present here. Jas's sort-of love interest, who is called Max (stereotypical Italian name!) uses no Italian except whatever it is for 'beautiful girl/woman' (he literally says it on every page). Jas's grasp of the Italian language fluctuates wildly. She goes from not sure how to answer a simple question to understanding a very complex sentence spoken by two native Italins while hiding in a cupboard. I get it, suspend disbelief, blah blah blah, but this was just so plain stupid. More stupid behaviour involves genre conventions: one minute, Jas is as savvy as they come about being in a mystery novel. The next minute, she lets her friends decide that it's a great idea for them all to SPLIT UP and search for the murderer. Except of course, for some reason, this overstuffed crowd of five does not split into three and two. Jas doesn't even get the majority group. In fact, for some moronic reason that isn't even mentioned in the text, Jas winds up alone. Yep. So forget the fact that she's the killer's target and the killer CAME TO SPEAK TO HER less than five minutes previously. Apparently it's a great idea for them all to split up and leave on her own to pursue him! The friends' super skills get to the point where they are no longer quirks and more like insane plot devices. For example, Alyson, Jas's arch-enemy, turns out to be great with computers despite appearing to be a traditional valley girl. This could be quite a neat twist if not for the fact that it comes up at the very moment that Jas needs a hacker. I'm not quite sure when else it was supposed to come up, but it really does reach ridiculous levels. Her friends have crazy skills (not a bad thing in themselves, given that this book is very much Not To Be Taken Serioiusly), but they have an abundance of crazy skills that always turn out to be a) totally logically impossible and b) exactly what is required to get them out of the latest impossible situation.
Still, if you want fun and funniness, you could do worse than "Kitty Kitty", if you're willing to ignore a pretty crap denouement....more
Let's start with the good stuff. I maybe read Deadly Cool in two hours. Despite being fairly long, it's incredibly2.5 stars
Gahhh! Such a...bland book.
Let's start with the good stuff. I maybe read Deadly Cool in two hours. Despite being fairly long, it's incredibly fast and pretty good fun. I'm a huuuuuge Veronica Mars fan, so a mystery in high school was right up my street. If you love mystery, and don't mind it being fairly light and fluffy, I would read this. However, maybe get it from the library instead of buying it? There's really no reread value in this one at all, and apat from Hartley's sparky voice and the incredible speed of the plot and general enjoyment factor, there's not much else to recommend. Although my personal rating is 2.5, I've been changing my GoodReads rating backwards and forwards from 2 and 3 since finishing it. "I liked it" and "it was okay" - both of these are totally, mutually true.
Although Hartley isn't a loathable character - there are very few BITCH WHAT U SMOKING?! moments of ridicule and/or absurdity. She isn't wholly stupid. Okay, she meets people in dark fields late at night even though she's definitely the killer's next victim, which is the very definition of stupidity, but Halliday just about convinces me that Hartley's diehard certainty of Josh's innocence is a human flaw rather than a hallmark of a total moron. Also, although it sped the story along and justified her actions well, Hartley's voice felt very, very dated to me. I'm not sure what it was. There were a lot of pop-culture references - CSI, Kings of Leon, Paris Hilton, Facebook, Myspace - that made me squirm. I don't like pop culture references in general (although they can be used to enhance the somewhat 'period' setting, like the late-90s era of We Need To Talk About Kevin) because I think it's a sign that the book will date very badly. Also, perhaps even worse, there were some uses of very modern slang like "facepalm", which made me cringe. This book came out YESTERDAY in the UK, but there was such an influx of modern and fashionable references that felt so modern that they were on the cusp of becoming dated, if that makes any logical sense? Coupled with Hartley's almost-but-not-quite grating voice - sprinkled with an unbelievable amount of slang like "dude", "like", "so" and "totally", like a bad valley girl imitation - this felt almost like an adult trying too hard to be 'down with the kidz.' I'm aware of how snobby that sounds, but the voice just didn't feel organic to me at all.
I'm ashamed to say that I did not figure out the killer, so kudos to Gemma Halliday. I'm not trying to sound like a 'sore loser' with this point, because I LOVE it when a book surprises me, but, even though I didn't guess the killer, it wasn't really a surprise? That sounds weird, I know, but what I'm trying to say is that I was expecting it to be less obvious than it was. Also, since I have been insulting this book, I did think that the setting was well-drawn and it did feel like I could have been there. The best thing of all, though, was definitely the pacing. Halliday knows exactly how to space out her plot twists, how much time to give to every plot point and - most importantly - how to keep her audience reading. I definitely was.
Unfortunately, very unfortunately, Halliday's characters are this book's ultimate failure. Criticisms of Hartley aside, her love interests (thankfully given very little face time in the novel) and the romance angle is downplayed, but it doesn't change the fact that this is a cliched, pathetic, trite and irritating excuse for one. The two love interests are the biggest cliches since Unlucky Childhood Friend: there's Josh (Dickish Spineless Football Player) and Chase (Rugged Bad Boy). Chase was such a massive, massive cliche. He wears black all the time and, just in case we thought he was a poser (spoiler: I did!), Halliday gets Gemma to say over and over that 'somehow Chase made it work.' Well, of course he did, Hartley, because he's your super special love interst. Speaking of which - he is, of course, totally ripped, and Hartley - who is a virgin - thinks that, if her boyfriend had been ripped like that, he probably wouldn't have had the problems getting her to have sex with him. Mostly irritatingly of all, though, (view spoiler)[smart and strong Hartley, who has figured out the mystery pretty much single-handed and ninjaed a fair few people in a short space of time, needs to be rescued by Chase. I felt like throwing up when I read that part. And they kiss after that, because, you know, what else is a hero and a damsel in distress supposed to do? (hide spoiler)] All the other characters are cliches and/or just quirks with legs -- Hartley's best friend, Sam, comes to mind. I learned nothing about Sam except that her parents were desperate for her to go to Stanford (repeated about x2000 times a page...approximately) and she'd tried to stop swearing because her dumb-as-rocks boyfriend told her that it was 'unfeminine.' I remember thinking, when I was reading that, that if a boy said that to me, I'd have a few unfeminine things to say to him. But, yeah, that means that, while Sam does absolutely nothing useful, we're subjected to swearword substitutes like "effing" (approx. x5000000 a page) which are supposed to be funny, but really, really aren't.
SPOILER paragraph on the killer. So the motive could have been pulled out of thin air and there were very no clues that I remembered except for the totally obvious ones (view spoiler)[of proximity etc. (hide spoiler)], but the motive was vaguely interesting. I mean, there was no emotional range to the killer at all - s/he was just a manic psycho, which I suppose is to be expected, but s/he wasn't really developed at all, just took off his/her metaphorical mask and became totally fruit-loop crazy. However, what really irritated me was the total stupidity shown in the last 10 pages or so. While this book had hardly been a masterwork of style, strucuture and logic, there were so many stupid things done that I spent much of those last 10 pages rolling my eyes. (view spoiler)[First, the killer ties Hartley up - even though her intention is to set a fire and make it look like an accident, which is total bullshit because she POURS LIGHTER FLUID to set the fire, but then again, she had been established as possibly the bluntest tool in the box. Then, even though the killer has no interest in dialogue with Hartley, she rips the tape off her mouth, which to me, just gave Hartley the chance to scream and/or get someone's attention. Also, how blind was she? The way Halliday describes it, she lets the bound Hartley crawl across the floor to slowly - and I do mean slowly chisel the tape off her wrists, giving a chance for a fairly hardcore fight. She may have been in the middle of her stereotypical HERE'S-WHY-I'M-A-FRUIT-LOOP speech, but the way Halliday described it was at once painfully obvious and convenient. (hide spoiler)]
This book isn't really as bad as I've made it sound -- it's not offensive, it's just a collection of stupid cliches strung along a very well-paced line. Bland and throwaway. ...more
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