Sweet Valley Confidential Slam Book
Who would've guessed it? Almost thirty years ago, when we first met “the most dazzling, the most adorable, most perfectest blond-haired aqua-eyed sixteen-year-old girls ever to grace this planet and you so wish you could be them!” did you ever imagine that, well into the 2000s, we'd still be talking about the Wakefield twins, and all the other mythical inhabitants of that El Dorado of a SoCal town, Sweet Valley?
Certainly not I. Not even when, a decade ago, in an Internet dearth of anything Sweet Valley, I posted my now-oft-linked Blather, Dwanollah's Sweet Valley Slam Book (http://www.dwanollah.com/blather/030102/index.html), did I think this day would come. In the years since I wrote the original Blather, I've received more emails than I can count, from women in the US, Australia, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, India, Japan, saying that they, too, read Sweet Valley books. They, too, were shaped by those characters. They, too, had questions, complaints, confessions.
We all shared this huge, pastel pink-and-yellow Gladiator- and sorority-populated world, and many of our lives' experiences were, in some way, touched by that. And all of us each thought we were the only ones willing to 'fess up....
After the last of the Sweet Valley books dribbled away, no longer seeming to have a place in a contemporary YA market of vampire slayers, princesses and drunken multi-hook-ups, we thought it was all over. But lo! Francine Pascal hadn't forgotten us! Francine Pascal was still there, with the Sweet Valley “bible” and a ready pen! In an interview in BUST Magazine back in 2005, she let spill that she was working on a new Sweet Valley project, Sweet Valley Heights, which would take place in an exclusive gated community, following the twins and their friends as twenty-somethings! We all flipped out in excitement, and then waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Of course, I threatened multiple times to write the damned thing myself if Francine didn't. I have my own outlines and proposals and rough scenes blocked out and everything, from Jessica working side-by-side with Alice Wakefield as an interior designer, putting her art history experience to some use, and Liz, lady of the manor and married to Max Pennington, rethinking her precipitous decisions and overall emotional well-being. And if SVC didn't come out this year, I probably would've done the Dwanollah version as my 2011 NaNoWriMo!
But Sweet Valley Confidential finally happened. It's here. And it's time to revel in that.
Don't underestimate the power of nostalgia. It's not just that we want to know “what happens next?” It's more than that. Now, as adults, as professionals and wives (and husbands!) and parents, there is something-dare I say it?-sweetly evocative about being able to return to a world that we inhabited, even just on the periphery, for a good-sized chunk of our childhoods. Yes, I, too, knew that, given the opportunity, Jessica Wakefield would blackball me from Pi Beta Alpha, Elizabeth might deign to give me a brief, consoling shoulder-pat before moving on to another project; no matter how many times I tried to copy Wakefieldian clothes or interests, I would never ever ever inhabit the kind of existence that Elizabeth and Jessica did. I would never be beautiful enough or smart enough or just plain special and loveable enough to be accepted in a real Sweet Valley. Maybe that's why, despite the fact that the actual plots were so eye-rollingly bad, the Evil Twin books resonated with us. Because, I mean, given the opportunity, how many of us wouldn't've preferred to leave our crappy lives behind and inhabit the split-level ranch house world of Sweet Valley, with those parents, those friends and boys, those Friday night dates and Saturdays at the beach and school days filled with supportive teachers and endless resources and fun?
But that's a daunting challenge for any author. How do you maintain the integrity of the original creation, honor the nostalgic impulses of millions of readers... and yet create a realistic story... especially when the story is set in a world like Sweet Valley, a world that never really existed, even when we look back on the “good old days” of our youth, a world that was always just a fantasy?
Sweet Valley Confidential is far from perfect. (The plot and characters of Confidential are actually more keeping in line with the “sequel” that lil' fifteen-year-old Dwanollah outlined back in the mid-'80s, something I called “Class Reunion,” taking place five years after high school graduation, that included a big dance and everyone paired up and Todd proposing to Liz during a dreamy slow song played by The Droids-) But how could SVC be perfect... even in a fictional world where seeming perfection is the norm? There are continuity issues, plot points that fall with a resounding clunk, disappointments in who is included and who is left out, anger at issues glossed over with a prose-version of the Elizabeth shoulder-pat. Especially, there is an ever-arching awareness that, no matter what she'd done with it, there's no way Francine could please all of the readers, all of the time. You can't include everything in one 300 pg book, from an arthritic Prince Albert the dog to all the extended family from the Sagas and stuff.
There are some really good moments, though. And there are some things that pissed me off. It's totally worth discussing.
Especially, there's really only one way that felt right-est to deal with “reviewing” something like Sweet Valley Confidential. Yes, my Readers, my friends, my fellow Lois Wallers and Roger Barretts... it's time for Dwanollah's Sweet Valley Slam Book, 2.0, Ten (Give or Take) Years Later!
(NOTE: Reviewing something like this before many of you have had a chance to even read it is difficult, and I'm going to do my best to be as spoiler-free as possible. There's a lot we already know, going into it, from the promo materials and first chapter. We know there's something going on with Liz and Bruce Patman, that Jess and Liz are estranged and it's probably because of a boy, and Liz is in NYC while Jess is back in SV. But if you want your Sweet Valley Confidential experience to remain entirely untainted, you might want to hold off on reading this first.)
Pleasantest Surprise: This is the first SV book actually penned, not just outlined, by Francine Pascal. And (as those of us who adored Hanging Out with Cici already know), she can actually write an engaging story. And if it was about a set of twin sisters, but NOT the Liz and Jess and everyone else we've grown up with, it would've worked much better.
Biggest Retread: The whole plot. Yep, Liz and Jess have fallen out over a guy and Liz left town... again. It's the Elizabeth series all over. It's all the Secret Diaries and the Sagas and the stuff we've already seen them go through twenty different times, so why should this be any different? You'd think Liz would be used to it by now. It would've been way more better if they'd fought over something else, something different, something that they haven't before...like which of them could give Mr. Wakefield a kidney or who has the first grandchild... real sibling rivalry issues that are familiar to the “soap opera” format, but are untouched territory in Wakefieldia.
Missing Element: Kids. In their late twenties, NO ONE has kids? Really? (Especially given the inclusive, small-town vibe that Francine's Sweet Valley has, which makes me picture an upscale, beach-side version of a Fresno suburb, where everyone marries everyone else from high school... but more on that later.) No one got knocked up in high school? None of these bored housewives crapped out an Accessory Baby with which to “save” their faltering marriages or give them something to do? None of these ego-driven men wanted progeny to prove their manfulness?
Best Non-Prose Detail: The endpapers! They're awesome, all nostalgic and iconic and really beautiful, and I'd kinda be tempted to buy it if it were produced as actual wallpaper, I admit....
Worst Non-Prose Detail: The actual cover photos of Elizabeth and Jessica. It's impossible to tell which twin married Spencer Pratt, and which one is fucking Hugh Hefner.
Worst Return Character: Caroline Pearce, who for some reason in her late twenties, is still glomming on to the more popular kids and gossiping like mad. As a plot device for passing on info, it's lame enough. But the idea that ten years after high school, you'll still be inviting the nosy, catty, backstabbing schlubb you don't even like to your gatherings, just in hopes of hearing some dish, is silly... and unbelievable. (Especially considering she was supposedly a much kinder Caroline Pearce after SVH 17.)
Best Return Character(s): It's a gimme, but the twins. This time, between Jessica's real explorations of feeling like the “second-best sister” and Elizabeth's less-than-soaring career path, they seem more accessible, more genuine than any other SV book. Before, so many of the issues were either token (Elizabeth Frets about Sexism! Elizabeth gains the Freshman Fifteen!) or over-the-top (Jessica gets married, gets almost beat up, and gets her brother shot and husband paralyzed all in two weeks!) that the twins didn't seem human. Add to that the whole “perfect size six” schtick, and really, it was hard to empathize with either of them. But now, we kinda can.
Least Satisfying Return Character: Miss Lila Fowler, dammit! If we needed a gossipy plot device to keep We the Readers up to date, why couldn't it be Lila? Instead, she's got a token walk-on role (and an unconvincing marital match)... and a boob job. Well, okay, I'll buy the boob job.
Lamest Stock Character (Still): Winston Egbert. In continuing with the grand high school tradition, he does almost exactly what you think every class nerd guy would do, all the way to the end. And now you get to hate him for it.
Most Realistic Career: Liz, who is writing for a middling little hotel-giveaway publication called “Show Survey,” or, as she often is forced to explain when no one's heard of it, “The Zagat's of Off-Broadway.” After decades of watching Elizabeth Wakefield rack up Big Win after Big Win in every possible literary and journalistic genre from playwriting to short stories to muckracking exposes to op. ed. pieces, it was refreshing to not find her working as some well-known foreign media correspondent, or running her own award-garnering Internet news blog, or accepting her third Pulitzer. It humanized her and made her more empathetic than anything else in the Sweet Valley world ever did.
Least Realistic Career: Todd Wilkins is a sportswriter for a newspaper? Todd “Whizzer” Wilkins?How did that happen? Does he know sports other than basketball? And since when can he string a sentence together on the page? Plus, the Potential Issues involved in Todd suddenly working in Liz's chosen career field are never explored, and could've made for some real character insight.
Most Overused Distinguishing Dialogue: Jessica's constant barrage of “like” and “so.” It was, like, so totally annoying! She even thinks like that?
Most Unused Distinguishing Dialogue: You'd hope Jess could've busted with one “something-hundred and thirty-seven” somewhere, just as one of those “make the readers happy” details.
Huge-est Continuity Issues: In a book like this, after how many thousands of earlier texts, there's bound to be some details that get mixed up. Of course, We the Readers, having consumed too much Sweet Valley in our formative years, are going to jump all over things like Mr. Collins's son being named Sam in SVC, when we all know it was Teddy, or Jessica supposedly doing something with blond-haired AJ Morgan in 7th grade when, der, AJ was a redhead and moved to Sweet Valley from Atlanta in their junior year. We know the Wakefields didn't belong to the country club back when the twins were in high school. We know that the SVH girls' basketball star was Shelly, not Lianne and Bruce was a year ahead of the twins in school, not the same class. But perhaps the biggest crime against continuity was Elizabeth reflecting on her own relationships, and thinking something like: “The possibility of Elizabeth Wakefield cheating on anything or anyone was near impossible. That was her reputation and, truth is, it was deserved.”
ARE YOU KIDDING?!
Elizabeth cheated on every single one of her boyfriends! Every time she was away for more than a couple days, she hooked up with someone else. Even when she was going on and on about how she and Todd/Jeffrey/Ken/Conner/Tom/Finn/Sam/whoever were the perfect couple or meant to be or had a soulmate connection, she'd meet someone else-a prince, a cute intern, a journalism student, a vampire-and off she'd go into Crush-ville. It was to the point that 13-year-old Dwanollah actually thought that human beings were not able to NOT cheat if they weren't together constantly! Granted, Jessica cheated all over the place, too, but we expected that from her. But with Liz, the “good” twin, it's like the parents who shriek “I am a good momma! I love my babies!” while CPS carts their malnourished and bruised children away: all the denial and assertions of the contrary can't wipe out what we've seen and what we can see now. So sorry, Liz. No. Wrong.
Runner up: Liz is surprised to find Todd in a fistfight with someone. Given all of the punches, pool pushes and confrontations in Todd's high school and college history, it's hard to believe anything outside of an actual gunpoint threat would surprise her or anyone about Todd.
Most “Whatever Happened To”? There are so many characters who had to be left out, but in this case, it's Denise Waters, Winston's girlfriend from SVU. Given Winston's story arc and character development in Confidential, Denise's absence leaves a real void. I mean, last we saw Winston, he and Denise-a gorgeous, respected and popular sorority girl at SVU-had been blissfully together for more than a year. What went wrong? How did the Winston of SVU end up the Winston of SVC?
Runner up: Billie the Girl, Steven's college live-in girlfriend of several years. She got pregnant. They almost married. She left, with his blessing, to study music for a year, and...? And instead he ended up marrying- But, wait, how?
Most Annoying Trivial Character Rewrite: Suzanne Devlin. We read the Christmas special and all that shit. We know what happened with her MS diagnosis. But now, no, that didn't happen?
Really, No Mention of.... Like I said, it would be impossible to cover everything. Even half of everything. No one would be surprised that, in the Ten Years Later world of Sweet Valley, Francine left out (for the most part) mention of werewolves, vampires, stalkers, serial killers, half-dozen dead boyfriends, magic vodka and evil twins. Okay, maybe we're pretending that the Elizabeth series with the Lord of Lizzie-Laying didn't happen. We can go with that, I guess. But there are lots and lots of things left out or rewritten that were canonical, dammit! Francine refers to a number of things that happened in the SVU timeline, like Jessica marrying Mike McAllery, or Liz going to NYC during a summer in college to have her play put on, after all. Accordingly there are some tidbits that should be accounted for. For instance... why is Enid now Enid again, not Alexandra?! What the hell happened to her?!
Overdone Incestuousness: Ostensibly, one of the primary points of Sweet Valley Confidential is that there IS life after high school. However, looking over party guest lists and who's-married-to-whom, you'd never believe it. Sure, my south-of-Fresno cousins and their friends mostly married their high school sweethearts right out of high school and still do all their socializing in almost identical groups to what they were in 10th grade. My brother's ex-girlfriend and her friends had been friends high school, in the same little “bad girl” clique. There were several intermarriages amongst my classmates from super-tiny-Christian Hypocrite High School. It happens. Sometimes.
But this isn't a podunk Central Valley, CA town or Lynn, MA... this is SWEET FUCKING VALLEY! It's more urbane than Boston, DC and Chicago combined, more old-school-rich than Beverly Hills, more privileged than Main Line Philadelphia! It has an entire community in the hills of multi-gabillionaires and rock stars and sports heroes and models and business tycoons living in mansions! It has multiple country clubs and exclusive French restaurants! Women, even high school girls, wear couture and real jewels; designers showcase their fashions at the local mall and hold major fashion shows; directors come to town to look for new movie stars. Sweet Valley has more fancy private schools than public. There are golf tournaments and tony charity balls. Students go to exclusive Swiss boarding schools or travel to Italy and marry counts or move to London or work summers in France. Royalty visits! It has a university so good that geniuses scorn their acceptances to Ivy League schools to attend it, and they meet lots of new friends and stuff in college, too! And yet no one manages to marry or hook up outside of their old high school circle...? C'mon. It's bad enough when Kelly and Brenda are still squabbling over Dylan fifteen years later on 90210, but at least that's supposed to be a specifically problematic issue between those characters, which makes it, if not tolerable, at least understandable on some level. In Sweet Valley, though, no one can manage to find spouses beyond the same two-dozen kids from high school? Even the ones who'd moved away indefinitely and/or internationally last we'd heard, or the ones who barely spoke to each other in high school? Really?
Most Unexplored Subtext: Not that I'm suggesting Liz and Jess are going the twincest route, no! But it's interesting how, whenever Jessica thinks of her estrangement from Liz, all she wants is to have her sister hold her... feel her sister's arms around her... throw herself in Liz's comforting embrace... cuddle up to her...crawl into bed together like they'd done so many times before. The fact that no man, no mother, no friend can replace that kind of physical embrace is all at the same time poignant, disturbing, immature, dependent, and psychologically problematic in a multitude of ways.
Not Even Subtle with the Subtext! Food, glorious food. Multiple characters either use food to hide their problems, or work in food-related careers to show that they're, like, totally over their problems, fat or otherwise. And considering that there are STILL no overweight people in Sweet Valley, having to mention that so-and-so had “only gained a little weight” or so-and-so managed to stay slim despite cooking a million fattening foods felt like a too-saccharine icing on a poo cake. We get it, we get it, fat is bad and wrong and ugly! I'm sorry!
Runner-up: Booze. Man, Liz drinks a lot these days.
Biggest Anachronism: Sweet Valley is still the whitest community since Eau Claire, WI. Granted, no one expected that Francine could fit in every single minor character, but not a single minority one...? Oh, wait, I think there's a Mexican “boy” working at the country club.
Biggest Contemporary Literary Hurdle Avoided: Chicklit. It made a holy mess of the later SVUs and the whole Senior Year series, with all the name-droppy product placement and shopping trips and makeovers and designer this and that. I had awful expectations of SVC being a Sex in the City retread, cutesy dialogue with groups of girlfriends, a Token Gay and/or Ethnic Friend, fab careers and trendy apartments... pretty much all the bullshit that made SVU so annoying and Senior Year feel so un-Sweet Valley. I thought for sure the contemporary press would claim that, in order to sell and market SVC to “women” or “its demographic,” we'd end up with something like Jessica the Shopaholic and Elizabeth-as-Bridget-Jones. But thankfully, they didn't (or didn't have to) go that route.
Runner up: Vampires, sparkly or otherwise. Fortunately, we've already been there and done that in Sweet Valley. Oi, have we ever!
Old SV Trope Upended: Back in the early days of Sweet Valley, if a character was sick (Tricia Martin) or disabled (Regina Morrow), they were saintly in their goodness and, ultimately, victims of the cruel world, in full-on Victorian stereotype mode. But in this Sweet Valley, several characters have had health issues and disabilities, and some are nice people, some are not. It's not their defining trait, nor is it used as an automatic consecration of a saintly personality. That was a very gratifying surprise.
Runner up: the whole “hilarity and hijinx” crap. So many times, Sweet Valley went the goofy slapstick route. But this time, other than a too-cartoonish family squabble, there wasn't any of the food-fighting, trip-and-falling, mistaken identity/twin switch, kitchen disaster, or secret spy/foreign accent bullshit. Thank you!
The Elephant in the Room: Bruce Patman, date rapist. We all know how Bruce was in high school with his paper cups of wine and boobie gropes and “getting anything he wants out of her, any time he wants it.” We know how he was in college, too, when he was lying about life-threatening circumstances to impress Lila while they were plane-crashed. Bruce Patman is a sexist jerk at best, a predator at worst. Argue that it's the whole rich brat thing if you will, but Bruce routinely treated women-Regina Morrow, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, Amy Sutton, Pamela Whatshername, Lila Fowler, even Julie Porter-like shit... even when he isn't overtly trying to get them drunk so he can fuck them and then tell everyone the next day. It's inexcusable.
But Francine even tries to bait-and-switch us with a coy aside about how “Bruce Patman kissed her! That had never happened before. Not while she was conscious anyway, but that's a long story.”
THAT IS NOT FUNNY OR CUTE, DAMMIT!
And I'm not asking for much. Certainly, I don't want Bruce to have to go through sex addicts' therapy or work for RAINN as part of probation and become a firm and vocal feminist (although... tempting...). But at least some acknowledgement that, if he'd been like that in high school, it was wrong, he knew it was wrong, everyone else knew it was wrong, ONE OF HIS VICTIMS KNEW IT WAS WRONG, and they all admitted it, would've been nice. Instead the issue gets a dated and gross little shrug, missing only the background chorus of “That's the way boys are!” The message is still that it's okay for the guys to be promiscuous, but not mentioned-in-the-epilogue girls.
Most TMI: Liz and her orgasms. FranPasc even mentioned in interviews that she wanted her characters to have healthy sex lives, and I totally agree, they should. But the psychologically disturbing image of Elizabeth Wakefield “crying after every orgasm” undercuts any notion of “healthy” sex life. Not to mention our uptight Lizzie, no matter how despondent, actually considering fucking her boss, as if it's inevitable, after a non-romantic dinner. That's healthy?
Issue That is STILL Totally Unconvincing: Homosexuality. Once again, as with Tom McKay back in the original series, it forfeits anything actually resembling the grueling long-term struggles that a gay man would've dealt with for over a decade while in multiple straight relationships and a marriage for a gimicky-feeling “surprise element.” It's like “Insta-Gay! Just add FABulous!” (But not TOO fab, because this IS Sweet Valley, after all, and, much like there are no lesbians, non-whites or fatties, there are certainly no drag queens, lady-boys, twinks, fruit flies, trannies-) The almost-triviality with which the issue is approached is highlighted in big, bold font when Jessica thinks in a throw-away manner, “I totally knew a gay guy, Neil, in college!” No! Sashay away!
Most Personally Surprisingly Touching Quote: Not that I ever based my own aspirations or perspectives on what I learned from Sweet Valley. Not that I ever, ever went the cheerleader/school paper route to be as Jessica-and-Elizabeth-therefore-perfect as possible in high school. Not that I thought that first love should equal last love, and anything else was inferior. Not that I held on way, way too long to those old, outgrown, but familiar things without the adult perspective I needed to say “That was a special time and place, but that's not me anymore, and realizing that doesn't devalue what things were.” I had to learn to let go, and I did. But it took having my fingers smashed and stomped on to get me to release some of it, because doing it myself would've meant questioning ideals I wasn't ready to have undermined at the time. It hurt, but it was so very right, and I'm forever grateful, because everything after was beyond my most far-fetched hopes for love, happiness and life.
Therefore, when I read Liz thinking “Suppose it wasn't love that had broken her heart. Suppose it was rejection and duplicity. Maybe that's what she would have needed to end it. Something catastrophic. She could never have ended it by falling out of love. She never would have known that she had; she cared too much. She was the commitment freak,” I felt a bit of a lump in my throat. As ridiculous as it is, there was still something in Sweet Valley to apply to my own experiences, and for a fleeting second, I wondered if somehow Francine knew and understood- or maybe even had read-
Then I came to my senses again. But the little glow from this silly, stupid personal validation, a feeling I'd found in these books so many times before as a fledgling person, was as much part of the nostalgia that returning to this whole world of Sweet Valley and the Wakefields was in the first place. It's absurd and even questionable, but even now, twenty-something years later, there's still that bit of Elizabeth-and-Jessica-Wakefield built into the adult person that is Dwanollah... just like there are bits of Laura Ingalls and Mary Lennox and Beezus Quimby and Betsy Ray and Sara Crewe and Sally J. Freedman and Emily Byrd Starr and all those other building-block/stepping-stone girl-characters from the literature of our youth.
I'm probably not the only one who feels that way, am I?
Most Amusing Quote: For the whole “wink, nudge” “I'm-in-on-the-joke” perspective: “It was a fun [event]. Not a whole lot different from any Sweet Valley High dance, which, as everyone knows, is not a whole lot different from real life.” I *sporfled*, and, admit it, I'll bet you did too!
Crowning Moment of Awesome: “Ned,” [Alice] shouted. “Bring out the fucking cake!”
You don't realize it, my friends and Readers, but you have been waiting your whole life to hear Alice Wakefield shriek “fuck!”
Certainly not I. Not even when, a decade ago, in an Internet dearth of anything Sweet Valley, I posted my now-oft-linked Blather, Dwanollah's Sweet Valley Slam Book (http://www.dwanollah.com/blather/030102/index.html), did I think this day would come. In the years since I wrote the original Blather, I've received more emails than I can count, from women in the US, Australia, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, India, Japan, saying that they, too, read Sweet Valley books. They, too, were shaped by those characters. They, too, had questions, complaints, confessions.
We all shared this huge, pastel pink-and-yellow Gladiator- and sorority-populated world, and many of our lives' experiences were, in some way, touched by that. And all of us each thought we were the only ones willing to 'fess up....
After the last of the Sweet Valley books dribbled away, no longer seeming to have a place in a contemporary YA market of vampire slayers, princesses and drunken multi-hook-ups, we thought it was all over. But lo! Francine Pascal hadn't forgotten us! Francine Pascal was still there, with the Sweet Valley “bible” and a ready pen! In an interview in BUST Magazine back in 2005, she let spill that she was working on a new Sweet Valley project, Sweet Valley Heights, which would take place in an exclusive gated community, following the twins and their friends as twenty-somethings! We all flipped out in excitement, and then waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Of course, I threatened multiple times to write the damned thing myself if Francine didn't. I have my own outlines and proposals and rough scenes blocked out and everything, from Jessica working side-by-side with Alice Wakefield as an interior designer, putting her art history experience to some use, and Liz, lady of the manor and married to Max Pennington, rethinking her precipitous decisions and overall emotional well-being. And if SVC didn't come out this year, I probably would've done the Dwanollah version as my 2011 NaNoWriMo!
But Sweet Valley Confidential finally happened. It's here. And it's time to revel in that.
Don't underestimate the power of nostalgia. It's not just that we want to know “what happens next?” It's more than that. Now, as adults, as professionals and wives (and husbands!) and parents, there is something-dare I say it?-sweetly evocative about being able to return to a world that we inhabited, even just on the periphery, for a good-sized chunk of our childhoods. Yes, I, too, knew that, given the opportunity, Jessica Wakefield would blackball me from Pi Beta Alpha, Elizabeth might deign to give me a brief, consoling shoulder-pat before moving on to another project; no matter how many times I tried to copy Wakefieldian clothes or interests, I would never ever ever inhabit the kind of existence that Elizabeth and Jessica did. I would never be beautiful enough or smart enough or just plain special and loveable enough to be accepted in a real Sweet Valley. Maybe that's why, despite the fact that the actual plots were so eye-rollingly bad, the Evil Twin books resonated with us. Because, I mean, given the opportunity, how many of us wouldn't've preferred to leave our crappy lives behind and inhabit the split-level ranch house world of Sweet Valley, with those parents, those friends and boys, those Friday night dates and Saturdays at the beach and school days filled with supportive teachers and endless resources and fun?
But that's a daunting challenge for any author. How do you maintain the integrity of the original creation, honor the nostalgic impulses of millions of readers... and yet create a realistic story... especially when the story is set in a world like Sweet Valley, a world that never really existed, even when we look back on the “good old days” of our youth, a world that was always just a fantasy?
Sweet Valley Confidential is far from perfect. (The plot and characters of Confidential are actually more keeping in line with the “sequel” that lil' fifteen-year-old Dwanollah outlined back in the mid-'80s, something I called “Class Reunion,” taking place five years after high school graduation, that included a big dance and everyone paired up and Todd proposing to Liz during a dreamy slow song played by The Droids-) But how could SVC be perfect... even in a fictional world where seeming perfection is the norm? There are continuity issues, plot points that fall with a resounding clunk, disappointments in who is included and who is left out, anger at issues glossed over with a prose-version of the Elizabeth shoulder-pat. Especially, there is an ever-arching awareness that, no matter what she'd done with it, there's no way Francine could please all of the readers, all of the time. You can't include everything in one 300 pg book, from an arthritic Prince Albert the dog to all the extended family from the Sagas and stuff.
There are some really good moments, though. And there are some things that pissed me off. It's totally worth discussing.
Especially, there's really only one way that felt right-est to deal with “reviewing” something like Sweet Valley Confidential. Yes, my Readers, my friends, my fellow Lois Wallers and Roger Barretts... it's time for Dwanollah's Sweet Valley Slam Book, 2.0, Ten (Give or Take) Years Later!
(NOTE: Reviewing something like this before many of you have had a chance to even read it is difficult, and I'm going to do my best to be as spoiler-free as possible. There's a lot we already know, going into it, from the promo materials and first chapter. We know there's something going on with Liz and Bruce Patman, that Jess and Liz are estranged and it's probably because of a boy, and Liz is in NYC while Jess is back in SV. But if you want your Sweet Valley Confidential experience to remain entirely untainted, you might want to hold off on reading this first.)
Pleasantest Surprise: This is the first SV book actually penned, not just outlined, by Francine Pascal. And (as those of us who adored Hanging Out with Cici already know), she can actually write an engaging story. And if it was about a set of twin sisters, but NOT the Liz and Jess and everyone else we've grown up with, it would've worked much better.
Biggest Retread: The whole plot. Yep, Liz and Jess have fallen out over a guy and Liz left town... again. It's the Elizabeth series all over. It's all the Secret Diaries and the Sagas and the stuff we've already seen them go through twenty different times, so why should this be any different? You'd think Liz would be used to it by now. It would've been way more better if they'd fought over something else, something different, something that they haven't before...like which of them could give Mr. Wakefield a kidney or who has the first grandchild... real sibling rivalry issues that are familiar to the “soap opera” format, but are untouched territory in Wakefieldia.
Missing Element: Kids. In their late twenties, NO ONE has kids? Really? (Especially given the inclusive, small-town vibe that Francine's Sweet Valley has, which makes me picture an upscale, beach-side version of a Fresno suburb, where everyone marries everyone else from high school... but more on that later.) No one got knocked up in high school? None of these bored housewives crapped out an Accessory Baby with which to “save” their faltering marriages or give them something to do? None of these ego-driven men wanted progeny to prove their manfulness?
Best Non-Prose Detail: The endpapers! They're awesome, all nostalgic and iconic and really beautiful, and I'd kinda be tempted to buy it if it were produced as actual wallpaper, I admit....
Worst Non-Prose Detail: The actual cover photos of Elizabeth and Jessica. It's impossible to tell which twin married Spencer Pratt, and which one is fucking Hugh Hefner.
Worst Return Character: Caroline Pearce, who for some reason in her late twenties, is still glomming on to the more popular kids and gossiping like mad. As a plot device for passing on info, it's lame enough. But the idea that ten years after high school, you'll still be inviting the nosy, catty, backstabbing schlubb you don't even like to your gatherings, just in hopes of hearing some dish, is silly... and unbelievable. (Especially considering she was supposedly a much kinder Caroline Pearce after SVH 17.)
Best Return Character(s): It's a gimme, but the twins. This time, between Jessica's real explorations of feeling like the “second-best sister” and Elizabeth's less-than-soaring career path, they seem more accessible, more genuine than any other SV book. Before, so many of the issues were either token (Elizabeth Frets about Sexism! Elizabeth gains the Freshman Fifteen!) or over-the-top (Jessica gets married, gets almost beat up, and gets her brother shot and husband paralyzed all in two weeks!) that the twins didn't seem human. Add to that the whole “perfect size six” schtick, and really, it was hard to empathize with either of them. But now, we kinda can.
Least Satisfying Return Character: Miss Lila Fowler, dammit! If we needed a gossipy plot device to keep We the Readers up to date, why couldn't it be Lila? Instead, she's got a token walk-on role (and an unconvincing marital match)... and a boob job. Well, okay, I'll buy the boob job.
Lamest Stock Character (Still): Winston Egbert. In continuing with the grand high school tradition, he does almost exactly what you think every class nerd guy would do, all the way to the end. And now you get to hate him for it.
Most Realistic Career: Liz, who is writing for a middling little hotel-giveaway publication called “Show Survey,” or, as she often is forced to explain when no one's heard of it, “The Zagat's of Off-Broadway.” After decades of watching Elizabeth Wakefield rack up Big Win after Big Win in every possible literary and journalistic genre from playwriting to short stories to muckracking exposes to op. ed. pieces, it was refreshing to not find her working as some well-known foreign media correspondent, or running her own award-garnering Internet news blog, or accepting her third Pulitzer. It humanized her and made her more empathetic than anything else in the Sweet Valley world ever did.
Least Realistic Career: Todd Wilkins is a sportswriter for a newspaper? Todd “Whizzer” Wilkins?How did that happen? Does he know sports other than basketball? And since when can he string a sentence together on the page? Plus, the Potential Issues involved in Todd suddenly working in Liz's chosen career field are never explored, and could've made for some real character insight.
Most Overused Distinguishing Dialogue: Jessica's constant barrage of “like” and “so.” It was, like, so totally annoying! She even thinks like that?
Most Unused Distinguishing Dialogue: You'd hope Jess could've busted with one “something-hundred and thirty-seven” somewhere, just as one of those “make the readers happy” details.
Huge-est Continuity Issues: In a book like this, after how many thousands of earlier texts, there's bound to be some details that get mixed up. Of course, We the Readers, having consumed too much Sweet Valley in our formative years, are going to jump all over things like Mr. Collins's son being named Sam in SVC, when we all know it was Teddy, or Jessica supposedly doing something with blond-haired AJ Morgan in 7th grade when, der, AJ was a redhead and moved to Sweet Valley from Atlanta in their junior year. We know the Wakefields didn't belong to the country club back when the twins were in high school. We know that the SVH girls' basketball star was Shelly, not Lianne and Bruce was a year ahead of the twins in school, not the same class. But perhaps the biggest crime against continuity was Elizabeth reflecting on her own relationships, and thinking something like: “The possibility of Elizabeth Wakefield cheating on anything or anyone was near impossible. That was her reputation and, truth is, it was deserved.”
ARE YOU KIDDING?!
Elizabeth cheated on every single one of her boyfriends! Every time she was away for more than a couple days, she hooked up with someone else. Even when she was going on and on about how she and Todd/Jeffrey/Ken/Conner/Tom/Finn/Sam/whoever were the perfect couple or meant to be or had a soulmate connection, she'd meet someone else-a prince, a cute intern, a journalism student, a vampire-and off she'd go into Crush-ville. It was to the point that 13-year-old Dwanollah actually thought that human beings were not able to NOT cheat if they weren't together constantly! Granted, Jessica cheated all over the place, too, but we expected that from her. But with Liz, the “good” twin, it's like the parents who shriek “I am a good momma! I love my babies!” while CPS carts their malnourished and bruised children away: all the denial and assertions of the contrary can't wipe out what we've seen and what we can see now. So sorry, Liz. No. Wrong.
Runner up: Liz is surprised to find Todd in a fistfight with someone. Given all of the punches, pool pushes and confrontations in Todd's high school and college history, it's hard to believe anything outside of an actual gunpoint threat would surprise her or anyone about Todd.
Most “Whatever Happened To”? There are so many characters who had to be left out, but in this case, it's Denise Waters, Winston's girlfriend from SVU. Given Winston's story arc and character development in Confidential, Denise's absence leaves a real void. I mean, last we saw Winston, he and Denise-a gorgeous, respected and popular sorority girl at SVU-had been blissfully together for more than a year. What went wrong? How did the Winston of SVU end up the Winston of SVC?
Runner up: Billie the Girl, Steven's college live-in girlfriend of several years. She got pregnant. They almost married. She left, with his blessing, to study music for a year, and...? And instead he ended up marrying- But, wait, how?
Most Annoying Trivial Character Rewrite: Suzanne Devlin. We read the Christmas special and all that shit. We know what happened with her MS diagnosis. But now, no, that didn't happen?
Really, No Mention of.... Like I said, it would be impossible to cover everything. Even half of everything. No one would be surprised that, in the Ten Years Later world of Sweet Valley, Francine left out (for the most part) mention of werewolves, vampires, stalkers, serial killers, half-dozen dead boyfriends, magic vodka and evil twins. Okay, maybe we're pretending that the Elizabeth series with the Lord of Lizzie-Laying didn't happen. We can go with that, I guess. But there are lots and lots of things left out or rewritten that were canonical, dammit! Francine refers to a number of things that happened in the SVU timeline, like Jessica marrying Mike McAllery, or Liz going to NYC during a summer in college to have her play put on, after all. Accordingly there are some tidbits that should be accounted for. For instance... why is Enid now Enid again, not Alexandra?! What the hell happened to her?!
Overdone Incestuousness: Ostensibly, one of the primary points of Sweet Valley Confidential is that there IS life after high school. However, looking over party guest lists and who's-married-to-whom, you'd never believe it. Sure, my south-of-Fresno cousins and their friends mostly married their high school sweethearts right out of high school and still do all their socializing in almost identical groups to what they were in 10th grade. My brother's ex-girlfriend and her friends had been friends high school, in the same little “bad girl” clique. There were several intermarriages amongst my classmates from super-tiny-Christian Hypocrite High School. It happens. Sometimes.
But this isn't a podunk Central Valley, CA town or Lynn, MA... this is SWEET FUCKING VALLEY! It's more urbane than Boston, DC and Chicago combined, more old-school-rich than Beverly Hills, more privileged than Main Line Philadelphia! It has an entire community in the hills of multi-gabillionaires and rock stars and sports heroes and models and business tycoons living in mansions! It has multiple country clubs and exclusive French restaurants! Women, even high school girls, wear couture and real jewels; designers showcase their fashions at the local mall and hold major fashion shows; directors come to town to look for new movie stars. Sweet Valley has more fancy private schools than public. There are golf tournaments and tony charity balls. Students go to exclusive Swiss boarding schools or travel to Italy and marry counts or move to London or work summers in France. Royalty visits! It has a university so good that geniuses scorn their acceptances to Ivy League schools to attend it, and they meet lots of new friends and stuff in college, too! And yet no one manages to marry or hook up outside of their old high school circle...? C'mon. It's bad enough when Kelly and Brenda are still squabbling over Dylan fifteen years later on 90210, but at least that's supposed to be a specifically problematic issue between those characters, which makes it, if not tolerable, at least understandable on some level. In Sweet Valley, though, no one can manage to find spouses beyond the same two-dozen kids from high school? Even the ones who'd moved away indefinitely and/or internationally last we'd heard, or the ones who barely spoke to each other in high school? Really?
Most Unexplored Subtext: Not that I'm suggesting Liz and Jess are going the twincest route, no! But it's interesting how, whenever Jessica thinks of her estrangement from Liz, all she wants is to have her sister hold her... feel her sister's arms around her... throw herself in Liz's comforting embrace... cuddle up to her...crawl into bed together like they'd done so many times before. The fact that no man, no mother, no friend can replace that kind of physical embrace is all at the same time poignant, disturbing, immature, dependent, and psychologically problematic in a multitude of ways.
Not Even Subtle with the Subtext! Food, glorious food. Multiple characters either use food to hide their problems, or work in food-related careers to show that they're, like, totally over their problems, fat or otherwise. And considering that there are STILL no overweight people in Sweet Valley, having to mention that so-and-so had “only gained a little weight” or so-and-so managed to stay slim despite cooking a million fattening foods felt like a too-saccharine icing on a poo cake. We get it, we get it, fat is bad and wrong and ugly! I'm sorry!
Runner-up: Booze. Man, Liz drinks a lot these days.
Biggest Anachronism: Sweet Valley is still the whitest community since Eau Claire, WI. Granted, no one expected that Francine could fit in every single minor character, but not a single minority one...? Oh, wait, I think there's a Mexican “boy” working at the country club.
Biggest Contemporary Literary Hurdle Avoided: Chicklit. It made a holy mess of the later SVUs and the whole Senior Year series, with all the name-droppy product placement and shopping trips and makeovers and designer this and that. I had awful expectations of SVC being a Sex in the City retread, cutesy dialogue with groups of girlfriends, a Token Gay and/or Ethnic Friend, fab careers and trendy apartments... pretty much all the bullshit that made SVU so annoying and Senior Year feel so un-Sweet Valley. I thought for sure the contemporary press would claim that, in order to sell and market SVC to “women” or “its demographic,” we'd end up with something like Jessica the Shopaholic and Elizabeth-as-Bridget-Jones. But thankfully, they didn't (or didn't have to) go that route.
Runner up: Vampires, sparkly or otherwise. Fortunately, we've already been there and done that in Sweet Valley. Oi, have we ever!
Old SV Trope Upended: Back in the early days of Sweet Valley, if a character was sick (Tricia Martin) or disabled (Regina Morrow), they were saintly in their goodness and, ultimately, victims of the cruel world, in full-on Victorian stereotype mode. But in this Sweet Valley, several characters have had health issues and disabilities, and some are nice people, some are not. It's not their defining trait, nor is it used as an automatic consecration of a saintly personality. That was a very gratifying surprise.
Runner up: the whole “hilarity and hijinx” crap. So many times, Sweet Valley went the goofy slapstick route. But this time, other than a too-cartoonish family squabble, there wasn't any of the food-fighting, trip-and-falling, mistaken identity/twin switch, kitchen disaster, or secret spy/foreign accent bullshit. Thank you!
The Elephant in the Room: Bruce Patman, date rapist. We all know how Bruce was in high school with his paper cups of wine and boobie gropes and “getting anything he wants out of her, any time he wants it.” We know how he was in college, too, when he was lying about life-threatening circumstances to impress Lila while they were plane-crashed. Bruce Patman is a sexist jerk at best, a predator at worst. Argue that it's the whole rich brat thing if you will, but Bruce routinely treated women-Regina Morrow, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, Amy Sutton, Pamela Whatshername, Lila Fowler, even Julie Porter-like shit... even when he isn't overtly trying to get them drunk so he can fuck them and then tell everyone the next day. It's inexcusable.
But Francine even tries to bait-and-switch us with a coy aside about how “Bruce Patman kissed her! That had never happened before. Not while she was conscious anyway, but that's a long story.”
THAT IS NOT FUNNY OR CUTE, DAMMIT!
And I'm not asking for much. Certainly, I don't want Bruce to have to go through sex addicts' therapy or work for RAINN as part of probation and become a firm and vocal feminist (although... tempting...). But at least some acknowledgement that, if he'd been like that in high school, it was wrong, he knew it was wrong, everyone else knew it was wrong, ONE OF HIS VICTIMS KNEW IT WAS WRONG, and they all admitted it, would've been nice. Instead the issue gets a dated and gross little shrug, missing only the background chorus of “That's the way boys are!” The message is still that it's okay for the guys to be promiscuous, but not mentioned-in-the-epilogue girls.
Most TMI: Liz and her orgasms. FranPasc even mentioned in interviews that she wanted her characters to have healthy sex lives, and I totally agree, they should. But the psychologically disturbing image of Elizabeth Wakefield “crying after every orgasm” undercuts any notion of “healthy” sex life. Not to mention our uptight Lizzie, no matter how despondent, actually considering fucking her boss, as if it's inevitable, after a non-romantic dinner. That's healthy?
Issue That is STILL Totally Unconvincing: Homosexuality. Once again, as with Tom McKay back in the original series, it forfeits anything actually resembling the grueling long-term struggles that a gay man would've dealt with for over a decade while in multiple straight relationships and a marriage for a gimicky-feeling “surprise element.” It's like “Insta-Gay! Just add FABulous!” (But not TOO fab, because this IS Sweet Valley, after all, and, much like there are no lesbians, non-whites or fatties, there are certainly no drag queens, lady-boys, twinks, fruit flies, trannies-) The almost-triviality with which the issue is approached is highlighted in big, bold font when Jessica thinks in a throw-away manner, “I totally knew a gay guy, Neil, in college!” No! Sashay away!
Most Personally Surprisingly Touching Quote: Not that I ever based my own aspirations or perspectives on what I learned from Sweet Valley. Not that I ever, ever went the cheerleader/school paper route to be as Jessica-and-Elizabeth-therefore-perfect as possible in high school. Not that I thought that first love should equal last love, and anything else was inferior. Not that I held on way, way too long to those old, outgrown, but familiar things without the adult perspective I needed to say “That was a special time and place, but that's not me anymore, and realizing that doesn't devalue what things were.” I had to learn to let go, and I did. But it took having my fingers smashed and stomped on to get me to release some of it, because doing it myself would've meant questioning ideals I wasn't ready to have undermined at the time. It hurt, but it was so very right, and I'm forever grateful, because everything after was beyond my most far-fetched hopes for love, happiness and life.
Therefore, when I read Liz thinking “Suppose it wasn't love that had broken her heart. Suppose it was rejection and duplicity. Maybe that's what she would have needed to end it. Something catastrophic. She could never have ended it by falling out of love. She never would have known that she had; she cared too much. She was the commitment freak,” I felt a bit of a lump in my throat. As ridiculous as it is, there was still something in Sweet Valley to apply to my own experiences, and for a fleeting second, I wondered if somehow Francine knew and understood- or maybe even had read-
Then I came to my senses again. But the little glow from this silly, stupid personal validation, a feeling I'd found in these books so many times before as a fledgling person, was as much part of the nostalgia that returning to this whole world of Sweet Valley and the Wakefields was in the first place. It's absurd and even questionable, but even now, twenty-something years later, there's still that bit of Elizabeth-and-Jessica-Wakefield built into the adult person that is Dwanollah... just like there are bits of Laura Ingalls and Mary Lennox and Beezus Quimby and Betsy Ray and Sara Crewe and Sally J. Freedman and Emily Byrd Starr and all those other building-block/stepping-stone girl-characters from the literature of our youth.
I'm probably not the only one who feels that way, am I?
Most Amusing Quote: For the whole “wink, nudge” “I'm-in-on-the-joke” perspective: “It was a fun [event]. Not a whole lot different from any Sweet Valley High dance, which, as everyone knows, is not a whole lot different from real life.” I *sporfled*, and, admit it, I'll bet you did too!
Crowning Moment of Awesome: “Ned,” [Alice] shouted. “Bring out the fucking cake!”
You don't realize it, my friends and Readers, but you have been waiting your whole life to hear Alice Wakefield shriek “fuck!”