Why am I returning to this book twice in the same day? Pure masochism, I think, or a desire to get to the end of it. At this point I'll settle for getting out of Blue's extended flashback sequence and into some actual plot. No such fucking luck.
The current chapter has to do with Blue entering her senior year of highschool in the most hateful way possible. She transfers into an elite private school, which her father must seduce the admissions officer to ensure she is a senior, all the while with the complete smug assurance that she will be the best student in the class. Not her father's smug assurance, by the way. It's ingrained in the writing. The sueness is just taken for granted at this point.
The first assembly devolves into Blue's tips on "how to be unbearably pretentious." No. Really. I mean, she calls it "implacable self-possession" but that's basically a synonym. It has two parts:
"Stately dignity can be possessed by all, in two ways:
1. Diverting the mind with a book or play.
2. Reciting Keats."
Naturally Blue worked this all out in second grade. Someone get me a can of Sue repellant and a lighter. It's flammable, right?
Blue is of course obviously superior to all of her classmates in every possible respect, and is humiliated by them at said opening assembly. I won't even bother with the rest of this sorry cliche, but the Jane Goodall reference comes up again. At least she's consistent. No, wait it's that other thing, what's the word, repetitive.
The rest of the chapter falls to a problem I'm having with this book. The content may be different, but the overall message, Blue's ludicrous superiority and the idiocy of everyone else, is the same. I'm growing blissfully numb to it. I just closed the book to type this, and I could honestly not tell you a word of the last three pages of the chapter, just that it was about her and her dad being better and more free-thinking than everyone, again. I think the word "Bolshevik" came up at some point. The next chapter has a French title, and I just ate dinner. It waits for tomorrow.
Pop-quiz everyone! What's the plot of this book? I'll let you know when I have an answer!