review: The Princess Diaries
The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
First book in the Princess Diaries series
HarperCollins Trophy 2001
283 pages
YA fiction/romance/humour
If you've seen the movie version, this book takes up about the first third or maybe half of the movie (from what I remember), but don't let that fool you into thinking nothing much happens in this book.
Mia Thermopolis lives in Manhattan with her artist mother Helen, going to a private school called Albert Einstein High and spending the summers with her father and his mother at her chateau in France. She knows they're rich, but she thinks her dad is just a politician. At school she's unpopular and has "triangular" hair; her best friend Lilly has her own tv show and is trying to expose the racism of the Chinese owners of the deli across the road for discounting Asian students 5 cents; she's in love with the most popular boy at school, Josh, who doesn't even seem to know she's alive; she's failing Algebra; and her mum is going out with her teacher Mr Gianini.
Life is already a bit of a strain and when her dad tells her he's the crown prince of Genovia and, since his testicular cancer has left him unable to have more children, Mia is now the heir to the throne, it becomes even more unbearable.
She's seriously not happy about the news, but makes a compromise with her Dad: that she'll keep going to school like normal, but would spend the summers in Genovia doing the princess thing. She wasn't expecting her formidable grandmother to come to New York to give her princess lessons, and she wasn't expecting the same grandmother to leak the story to the press. Now she's suddenly popular but it's the last thing she wants.
Mia is effortlessly engaging, her voice and personality coming through strongly in her diary entries. She's funny without meaning to be, insightful without realising it, reveals more than she intends, and so allows the reader to not only really get to know her but also see what's going on more clearly than she does, as she's blinded by her own interests, passions and opinions. It's actually very cleverly written, and very funny.
The grandmother is a scary character - Julie Andrews really toned the character down for the movie - she wears a purple turban, smokes a lot, drinks her favourite cocktail all the time, and comes across as somewhat harsh and even cruel. She certainly intimidates her son, Phillipe, and anyone else who crosses her path. She may have met her match with Mia - and I can see that as Mia slowly grows, matures and, yes, transforms, she'll probably have a softening effect on her grandmother as well. She's certainly got an interesting past, but we only get hints of it at this stage.
Essentially, what saves this book from being just another YA journal-style teenage girl gushathon is Mia's liveliness, her spirit, her humour and, well, her. She's a wonderful protagonist and a good role model - not that she doesn't make some pretty silly mistakes and choices along the way. She's also a familiar character, and reminds me that what's considered "ordinary" usually disguises something pretty extraordinary. Plus, I love her summing-up of Marx's contradictions of capitalism; despite the fluffy pink cover, this is no Gossip Girls kind of book - Mia's not into having the latest crap: she's a conscientious worrier, and wants to join Greenpeace to save the whales. She's a bit of a dag, really, and that makes her infinitely likeable, even loveable.