Category: Rant

The Handmaid’s Tale

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Remember how back in the day you came across a book that was just beyond awesome? Something in a world and time not far off from your own, something that might just be around the corner? And then years later, you’re roaming the stacks at the library, pick up the book and flip through it and curse the day that it became a summer reading for the clever high school student and think people who underline/write in pen/highlight a library book should be shot? Oh…just me? Like I’m the only person who wants to lose themselves in book and NOT have “so true” and “LIAR” or “men are bad, women are worse” popping out of the margins.

So what inspired the above rant? Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The 1980s cult classic of a future North America under the grip of a totalitarian rule with the female population stripped of basic rights (having money in their own names, jobs outside the home,birth control) and certain women moved from household to household to try and give high ranking childless couples  children. Awesome book back in the day, still gripping twenty five plus years later. However the library copy I checked out was filled with all kinds of little “love notes”. SO ANNOYING. Please do me and libraries a favor. If It Ain’t Your Book DO NOT WRITE IN IT! GO TO A USED BOOK STORE! OR BETTER YET A LIBRARY BOOK SALE! End Rant!

Sinners

~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

When you get to my great age (okay I know I’m not THAT old but when you’ve spent the day chatting with a younger coworker old enough to be your son, well…you know), you forget certain things. Turning off the oven (guess who has charcoal briquettes…I mean chicken nuggets for lunch tomorrow?), charging your cell phone, checking the weather report BEFORE leaving the house in cute velvet ballet flats on a rainy day, remembering Sinners has to be the worst 1970s Jackie Collins novel EVER!

Even worse than The Love Killers.

Actually The Love Killers has an interesting story, three women getting revenge for the murder of their friend. But Sinners?

WHISKEY TANGO FROSTED POP TART. Why didn’t I remember how bad this was?!?!

The only thing keeping me from flinging said book against the wall was a) did NOT want to have to buy replacement copy and b) book hitting the wall would have woken up the small children next door leading to their mother yelling for them to go back to sleep. So Sunday Simmons Is An Idiot Sinners ended up on the nightstand.

Now I read some awful books as a young lass (see review of June Flaum Singer novels, Rae Lawrence’s Satisfication) so what makes the divine Jackie’s Sinners stand out? Hmmm…

-over the top names: our Brazilian/French heroine SUNDAY SIMMONS, robo-bimbo aka Gold Digga DINI SYDNE…honestly, my brain HURTS just typing that last name let alone reading it…my brain was “ummm Didi, Dimbo….DINDI? Like Cindi? Whiskey Tango Frosted Poptart!”. Almost makes himbo actor Branch Strong sound refreshing versus a bi-curious porn star.

-Queen’s English to Americun English: thank the deity of your choice I gobble old British gentle read novels because if not I would have been the spouse asking “what’s a box-room?”. (very long story for another day).

At this stage of the game Jackie was still split between America and the UK. And it shows. Not so bad you need an annotated Jackie Collins (how COOL would THAT BE?) but still.

-Sunday Simmons: our golden skinned/haired lioness heroine with luscious knockers that can poke out your eye in a totally hot but classy way (Blacklight; “keep talking” Me: “Pervert!’) makes you LONG for Lucky Santangelo. Because Lucky has BALLS. Big, clanking, how can she walk brass ones.

Sunday Simmons? She has ethics about been exploited on a film in the first few chapters. Go Sunday, git yours. She manages to avoid getting too involved with man-ho actor Steve Magnum (they’re engaged but she finds out he’s cheated on her with her so called friend Dimbo DAMNIT DINDI before they do the deed).

But the divine Jackie sure makes up for it. By the last seventy five pages Sunday’s gotten raped or nearly raped by creepy hot French director/utter bastard Claude, the two actors in Claude’s film who do a rape scene BY RAPING THE LEAD ACTRESS WHILE THE CAMERA ROLLS, a group of twisted bleepers who can only get off on having sex at “black magic parties” (I dare you, I triple dog DARE YOU to get this far into the book) and lastly by her stalker/chauffeur Herbert Lincoln Jefferson.

And the last page?

Guess what’s most likely to happen to Sunday now that’s she’s escaped to England with her new boyfriend Charlie Brick? EWWWW….

In one of the earlier HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast episodes, hosts Chad and Chris mention that a story has an opening that feels like a first draft/trial run for a truly classic opening. British comedian Charlie Brick might seem like a rerun of Charlie Dollar but his quirky comedian with an outrageous former showbiz mother feels like a dry run for Lenny and Alice Golden in Lucky.

Same goes with a cameo featuring two strippers (one beyond skinny, one hugely plump) brings to mind George I’s two mistresses from Hanover AND the groupies who hook up with Al King’s doomed son in Lovers and Gamblers. Sorry…spoiler alert I guess…

And yes, I DID just make a historical reference about a Jackie Collins novel. 

Ramblings aside, Sinners lives up to it’s name. It’s full of sin/scandal/sex. It’s also a difficult read if you’ve only read Jackie Collins 1980s and after.

Read Sinners if you MUST, but don’t come crying to me or asking for the $8 to replace the paperback at your local library.