On Potter Springs...
(I apologize to any overlapping MySpace readers...if there are any.)
I just got done reading Britta Coleman's debut novel, Potter Springs. I picked it up at the Borders because it was on the 3-for-2 table, and because I'm a sucker for debut novels. I feel like if they put out the effort (and believe me, I know it's an effort) to write an entire novel, to be able to come up with a beginning, middle and ending, and characters to support the story on it's way through, then they deserve recognition for their efforts. Believe me, I only convey this degree of recognition to debut authors. Once you've done it, it up to you to earn your future readers.
At any rate, I finished it over the weekend and I had to take a while to really pause and think about what I thought about it, which makes no sense because it should have just hit me (and it did, to be honest) but I wanted to be sure I was being fair. After all, debut novelist and all that.
However. There are standards. I'm not saying the book sucked. I'm saying there were a lot of parts missing. Elementary parts. Parts that any decent high school teacher would have flagged with an F.
Let me start back at the beginning. Potter Springs is a story about a pastor from Houston and his girlfriend (at least as the novel opens) who hit a snag (she's pregnant but they're not married), and then an even bigger snag (she miscarries), in their Grandiose Life Plans and have to bail to Potter Springs, Texas to start over. But their Snags are apparently the kind of big deals that can ruin a pastor's career forever so they have to keep them a secret. I get that; makes sense, even.
So, they get to Potter Springs (oh, forgot to tell you, they got married) and the whole blooming town is sitting in their driveway, waiting to greet them. They're all people from the church, so I'm still relatively comfortable with this representation of small town life (y'all, I live in a town of 350 or so, and nobody sat out in my driveway and waited on me and my U-Haul, but I wasn't coming in to be their associate pastor, either, so like I said…). Amanda, the lead female character, is exceedingly distraught over the Snags (throughout 95 % of the book) and supposedly nobody notices. Okay, maybe she's really good at hiding her utter, wretched misery (I know I wouldn't be). Moving on.
Amanda doesn't come to church for the first month or so and people talk, which, if you're the associate pastor's wife, is bound to happen. I'm still on track here. Then the church ladies have a get-together and for some reason Amanda has to go, something about the head pastor's wife was sick or something. But when she gets there, she literally sits at the back and says nothing. And nobody notices (except some hot chick who's the head of the Ladies' Auxiliary or something, and of course points it out over a microphone). This is a small issue, but an issue nonetheless. If it was soooooo important that Amanda go, at least have her do something.
At any rate, time goes by, Amanda still doesn't go to church, and then suddenly there's some kind of Ladies' Auxiliary retreat weekend happening and Mark (the lead male character, Amanda's husband) talks her into going. We are with her as she's unhappy and heads off in the car with the ladies, we're with her when one of them even has a little talk with her in the car about having a miscarriage (PS…I'm sorry, but I cannot buy that five women are riding in a car, I don't care if it is a Suburban, and can't hear the conversation going on between a woman in the middle row and one in the back). We're with her when she gets to the retreat, writes herself a letter saying how she wants to be better, and then seals it up - still depressed, I'd like it noted.
Here is where I start becoming disappointed. The next thing we know, Amanda is coming home from the retreat and she's ecstatic. She's whispering sexy things to her husband over the phone. She's giggling and going on with the other women. WHAT HAPPENED?! Seriously, I'd really like to have been walked through that one. A giant emotional turning point in the story is a pretty big event that you should probably cover. But we don't get to find out, we just know she's happy and back to her fiery old self.
Until she gets home and finds out that her previously sane husband has traded her car ("My car!") for a minivan so he can sign her up to tote youth around for the church. Again, I'm left to blink stupidly at the pages before me, close the book, and reopen it to be sure I didn't miss the section where Mark lost his mind. You have to understand that a ton of the narrative is about how thoughtful and timid and careful Mark is with Amanda since the miscarriage and how all he does is try to make her happy. Y'all, don't ask me to believe that a man who is supposedly attached at the soul to his wife wouldn't know what her beloved first car meant to her, I don't care how junky it was. And don't ask me to believe that this same man, even if he would make such a horrendous mistake, would then trade the damn thing in for a minivan to tote around youth (hello, miscarriage!) for his job. That is one Gigantic Load of Not This Character right there.
Moving on (with great difficulty), Amanda takes the minivan to the dealer to get her car back. The guy's a jerk, yadda yadda, she doesn't get the car, but she'll be back tomorrow to get it because she's not giving up. Because she's back to the Old Amanda (which I don't prefer to be reminded of, given how I missed that all-important transformation). Except when she gets home, Mark tells her he got a call from her mom and her father had a heart attack (or something, it's not clear). She tosses everything she owns, except her cat, into the minivan and leaves Mark in the dust to go tend to her dad. I'm on track with this one because apparently she was very close to her father.
What I'm not on track with is being told how close she is to her father. There is nothing, no present-day scenes, no flashbacks, nothing to demonstrate this relationship but it's alluded to multiple times as Amanda thinks about how she feels about the man. This is another area I'd like to see fleshed out. I'm huge on not having stuff crammed down my throat in a novel. Just show me.
On a side note, I have the same problem with Amanda's mother who we are told is The Worst Woman In The World, but a) pays for Amanda's wedding, b) gets excited about having a grandbaby, c) pays for Amanda's trip to Mexico later in the story, d) pays for Amanda's mother-in-law's trip to Mexico later in the story, and e) calls her daughter pet names such as "baby girl" or "little girl" all the time, obviously out of fondness and devotion. Please, please don't tell me one thing and demonstrate another. I get upset.
So, Daddy's sick and Amanda heads to Houston, leaving Mark behind with Hottie Ladies' Guild Chick (or whatever she is). I think her name is Courtney. Courtney helps to set up all the wonderful church events, but is apparently Harlot of the Year. Seriously, how are you going to have a woman who throws herself at the married pastor as the head of anything church related? Isn't that a firing offense? So, Mark and Courtney are buddies (because Mark is the quintessential Leading Male Moron and can't tell that this woman is shaking her thang in his direction) and they're doing homey, churchy things and then the night of the Fall Ball (or whatever) happens and she invites him home and he accepts and he ends up spilling something on himself and making a mess in her house and leaving before they get started.
But, of course, this is the one night Amanda calls him to tell him she's finally coming home (after a month or so in Houston) and he doesn't answer the phone. AND, to top things off, the deacon (I believe) calls Amanda in Houston and oh-so-innocently mentions Mark and Courtney rubbing elbows late into the night. So Amanda packs her things, gets in her ill-gotten minivan, and starts to hightail it to Potter Springs. But takes a wrong turn and goes to Mexico. And keeps going because she decides, sure, what the heck.
WHAT? Y'all, if I hear some girl's in my husband's bed (or vice versa), I'd be in Potter Springs faster than Speedy Gonzalez and I'd open up the cat cage and let Mr. Chesters wrestle around under the covers with them. (Mr. Chesters is Amanda's cat who apparently isn't keen on Mark and tattoos him at every possible opportunity.) But I sure wouldn't be taking his stupid Youth Minivan to Mexico.
But okay, I'm calm, I'm accepting that Amanda, who was fixed but now is not, needs to go lay on the beach for a while. (PS…was she carrying her passport with her to cross the border or her birth certificate, do you think?) And she's there for another month, I think. And then her mother-in-law shows up, funded by Amanda's evil mother (pffft), right when Amanda's getting up the gumption to head home and tells her not to go home, that Mark should be alone for a while.
I understand that Ms. Coleman (the author, remember?) is trying to create a deep, emotional, way-beyond-the-surface situation here but I'm having trouble with it because she's speeding through this novel at light speed without going into depth herself. I need some explanations here as to when Mark's mother changed her character entirely and decided to embrace and love her daughter-in-law when previously she was Uber Evil Nitpicker of Doom (they had a brief scene where they hosted Mark's mother for dinner and she criticized Amanda at every turn…PS, Mark, grow a spine and defend your friggin' wife) and go spend some Mexican Beach Time with her. I also need to know how Mark, upon the discovery that his wife had a cell phone number and his mother-in-law wasn't giving it to him, didn't get his happy ass to Houston to sit on Amanda's mother and beat the number out of her. There are a lot of situations that are just sort of accepted without much pause in this story, and I have issues with that which are related to my show-don't-tell issues stated previously.
At any rate, Mark finally gets his crap together, goes and buys his wife's car back…only to find that it's been busted by some teenager. So he buys a Cars For Dummies book and can't figure it out (because apparently it's not in Pastor Language…y'all, even I can understand the "for Dummies" series). Along comes the head pastor and his buddies and they get out and kick some tires and spit in the yard and mention, "By the way, we have a guy here who used to be a mechanic because we heard you driving by the Dairy Queen and figured we ought to call him." And so they fix his car.
I have no problem with the car being fixed. I have a mondo problem with the next paragraph, where Mark leans back and a soft glow comes over the scene (not literally) and he thinks about how these men were strangers and then they were friends (I missed that transition, by the way…) and now they're brothers. WHAT? WHEN? WHO? HOW? I'm completely, completely dumbfounded by this. Mark is barely mentioned in this book unless it has to do with Amanda. There are a couple scenes he has outside of his married life, and none of them include the mechanic or the other dude. You just can't make statements like that without laying a foundation. Or at least half a foundation. A quarter would be nice.
Whatever, Mark gets his car fixed (except something about the transmission or radiator is still leaking…which sounds pretty big to me, Mr. Mechanic Guy) and makes it to Mexico. Just in time to get walloped by a hurricane. I kid you not.
Britta, Ms. Coleman, honey, I really understand a need to create challenges for your characters. Sweetie, you do not need to get out the Challenges Dictionary and use every. Single. One. I was with you on the hardship wagon right up until the hurricane. That was the last straw. Or gale force. Whichever.
Both parties survive the hurricane (duh) and get reunited on the other side and they're healed by the separation and the challenges and yay, love is back! Actually, outside the hurricane, I found the final chapter to be the best written. Not the epilogue, which had an unfortunately predictable moment with the baby and the mommy being interchangeable. The last chapter, where they got back together.
Overall, it wasn't awful. I'm being incredibly facetious here because I can, but it was a good effort. My problem is that along with all the foundation issues I had (and there were plenty), the writing was…amateurish. I'm not a professional and I probably have no authority to say anything, but I know when something is good and refined and worthy of being published when I read it because I've read thousands of books. This was, I hate to say it, one of the first books I've ever read where I sincerely questioned the quality of the editor and publisher based on an author that they've allowed through the filtration process. I have read better writing back in high school English.
There was an overabundance of metaphors and similes, and the "imagery" was so forced I could feel myself choking. There was one part in the beginning where Mark proposes to Amanda and she's happy about it, but she looks at his face and sees he's maybe doing it out of obligation (because she told him she was pregnant before he proposed), and Ms. Coleman makes a reference to Amanda's unspoken words falling around her like leaves…and it doesn't work. In fact, it works to the contrary. It sort of rips you out of the story and instead of seeing the scene, you're seeing the black and white page. It's distracting and disconcerting, and it's one of her major downfalls in my opinion.
Honestly, it wouldn't take that much for this book and this author to be at least on par with publishable works, but what it would take are basic, elementary steps and I think it's unfair that an author that was unable to manage them (at least in this book…I haven't read her short stories or articles, so I won't make a generalization about all her work) would be given an opportunity to be published and possibly strip someone else, someone who is ready now, of the chance.
I do apologize to Ms. Coleman (as if she'll ever, ever read this) for the manner in which I wrote this review. It was sarcastic and unprofessional, but I'm not a professional book reviewer, I was feeling extremely strongly about the impact this book had on me, and my feet are cold. Cold feet are a good excuse for most inexcusable behavior.