★
Why is chick lit so annoying? Why are books aimed at women or about women usually about them coming into themselves or of themselves or with themselves or any of these things in the company of other women in such a way that you are immediately supposed to feel a camaraderie with every other woman over how awesome women are? That's why I don't normally read this stuff.
I think I have a healthy appreciation for female friendships - I'm not very good at making them, so when I have them, I try to treasure them. And I also have an incredible respect for the self-journey, the one you have to go through to grow up. However, how hard is it to write a book in which a woman is just a person that stuff happens to? In books about men, they go on adventures, and at no point in the book does the man stop to think, Am I awakening? No, because he's awake. While thinking of his friends, does he stop to ponder, Dude, I am so happy to be here and a part of this awesome brotherhood who help me be the best dude I can be? Probably not. He just does stuff, and is stuff, and when things happen to him and he does feel the need to be introspective, he gets to think about things that aren't him. He gets to think about religion or politics or adventure or bravery or whatever he wants to. He can think about his journey into manhood if he wants, but he's not obligated. Why is it so hard to write a book or (and perhaps this is the real issue) publish a book about a female protagonist who is not engaged in a quest of self-discovery. Maybe I'm a lady and I'd like to discover something else.
Needless to say, I did not care for The Mermaid Chair. I read it because I was surprised by Secret Life of Bees, also by SMK. I wish I'd just stuck with that one.
The main character Jessie is whiny and generally shitty. She has some very basic discontent about her life, which she doesn't express to her husband. Then she goes off to a Carolina sea island (the only part I did like), whereupon she falls in love with a monk, I suspect precisely because of how little risk is potentially involved in falling in love with a monk. Plus, it's exciting, right? Then she paints a lot, things that are supposed to be deep and meaningful, but in this way she doesn't understand yet. Apparently Jessie is not very smart.
All the potentially interesting bits are glossed over. The book begins with Jessie finding out her mother has purposefully chopped off her finger with a meat cleaver, and yet once Jessie gets to the island, she spends very little time trying to unravel this mystery or even trying to talk to her mother. We eventually find out what led her mother to do such a crazy thing, and it's dealt with in a couple of pages, spic and span, when really it's the kind of thing you find out and it totally changes your life.
Almost as if to highlight how ridiculous Jessie is, her love interest Whit is struggling with the big questions, like if his life has any meaning and how God works. In Kidd's world, Whit gets to think about the universe, Jessie only thinks about herself. On top of everything, Jessie and Whit spend a lot of, ahem, alone time together, and never once do they discuss these big questions of his. Nope. She's screwing a monk and she never stops to ask, "So how do you feel about God?"
Finally, Jessie keeps going on and on about finding herself, and wanting to be independent, but she literally falls for Brother Thomas (aka Whit), the day she arrives on the island. The very day. Dear Jessie, that is not alone. I hated that aspect of the story.
I watched Eat, Pray, Love a couple weeks ago. I was expecting to be annoyed with the movie, but I was completely surprised. Julia Roberts is the star, and I don't remember her character's name, but it doesn't matter. Anyway, JR goes on this quest, and first she eats. She feeds her soul and her body, and sure, she's lonely in Italy. She struggles with being single in a city of lovers. You can see how bittersweet it is for her to be surrounded by friends who are all paired up. But she makes it clear that this is about how to be alone. Then she prays. Once again, she struggles, but in a sense, when she stops trying to find herself, and she starts trying to find something larger, that's when just being herself stops being so damned hard. Finally, there's love. I wonder how we'd feel about quest parts 1 & 2 if she hadn't ended up with Javier Bardem, but whatever. My favorite part of the entire movie was when Javier is trying to get her to take this leap of faith with him, and she runs away. She's talking to her spiritual advisor yogi dude, and she says, "I couldn't keep my balance." That's real. She found her independence, her way to live her life without the necessity of a man, and when love came along, she was terrified of losing everything she'd fought for.
Now contrast that with Jessie. So really it's not hard to see where the plot here falls short. The only slight redemption is that Kidd acknowledges it at one point. Hugh (the jilted husband) is a psychiatrist (cliche), and he's in his study and there's this passage:
Over and over he'd come across the same idea - not the least bit unfamiliar to him - that when a person was in need of cataclysmic change, of a whole new center in the personality, for instance, his or her psyche would induce an infatuation, en erotic attachment, an intense falling-in-love. p.279So at least Kidd understands that Whit isn't meant to be love, he's meant to be a catalyst for Jessie. But somehow that doesn't make it any better. Just because this is how people do it doesn't mean it's the best way. I'd rather see someone fight it out with themselves than be swept along on some current of "love," letting it do the work they're too afraid to do themselves.
This counts toward the 100+ Challenge and the Southern Challenge. I guess it also counts toward the Page to Screen, but I have absolutely no intention of watching the made for TV movie, so I'm not counting it there.
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