Thursday, July 30, 2009

It's a book review! It's a game! It's Weekly Geeks!

There are 3 random words and one random phrase (from Creativity Tools random word generator) inserted into the review below. Your job is to guess whether the book (premise, title, etc.) is as fake as the cover I created, and which are the randomly generated words and phrase. For further details, see the full Weekly Geeks assignment.

Lenore's boyfriend Fergie snuck out of their shared flat in Quebec on the day after Christmas and took the Union Jack bus to Florida on Lenore's dime, leaving a huge debt in his wake. As Lenore puts it, in her distinctive way: "The debt rattles into the Jack coach, while I listen to its endless echo, alone. Alone, that is, except for Heidi upstairs, and she's about as sympathetic as a robot."

Something Drastic
consists mostly of Lenore's pathetic letters to Fergie, begging him to return, or to call her, or even just send a postcard. Author Colleen Curran does a brilliant job bringing Lenore's voice through in her letters. And, though the letters are written entirely from Lenore's perspective, it's easy for the reader to see that she's completely delusional when it comes to Fergie. He's a jerk, and everyone but Lenore knows it. Curran does insert some letters from Lenore's upstairs neighbor to give further details of the circumstances by which Fergie left, but they're really not necessary.

Lenore's voice is so authentically pathetic that I had a hard time reading it. I think some would find her endearing, but I had to put the book away several times because I couldn't bear to read her recurring slogan, "How could you do this to me," any more. She does begin to come to her senses and stick up for herself, but I almost didn't make it to that point. For me it was too little, too late.

3 comments:

  1. I kind of hope this is fake, because the protagonist sounds unbearable! I bet your random sentence was "The debt rattles into the Jack coach," and your random words were...robot, echo, and upstairs?

    ReplyDelete