SBD: show, don't tell
It's a St. Patrick's day SBD. Maybe I should drink some green beer? Eh, no. But I have some Irish whisky at home, so I'll pour a glass this evening in honor of the SBD-ery.
I skimmed Jo Barrett’s This Is How It Happened (not a love story) last week. It wasn’t a love story, and I had no HEA expectations of it. When I first finished the book, I probably would’ve graded it as a B-. The language was okay: it didn’t stand out as particularly lyrical, nor did it make me want to break out a red pen. I liked the narrative style, in which the chapters alternated between the past and present. The characterization seemed a little weak and the plot a bit tired (A Comedy of Errors and Anger), but I liked the idea of it - a woman getting over her ex and her need for bitter revenge by moving on with her own life. But after reflecting more on the characters, I found myself becoming more and more irritated and disappointed by the heroine.
Show, don’t tell is one of the primary rules of characterization and narration. I thought that what Barrett told the reader about Maddy as a heroine (that she was strong and smart) was completely undermined by what she showed the reader (that Maddy had no self-respect and no common sense). The evil ex was so Utterly Evil that Maddy’s clinging to him came across as pathetic, naïve and downright stupid.
1. She does his homework and projects through their entire MBA program because he has to work. WTH? She worked, too, and managed to keep up with her classwork.
2. His comfort is more important than her health? He doesn’t like to wear condoms even though she is unable to use hormonal birth control, so he just doesn’t. Screw that. Or rather, don’t screw him.
3. He had genital herpes and didn’t tell her. To use a Dan Savage acronym: DTMFA. Not because of the herpes, but because he didn’t ‘fess up about it until she found his medication and called him on it. A guy who cared about you would not knowingly endanger you or your health.
4. He manages to get “their” business (which she conceived) in his own name, perpetually putting off “giving” her any share because of the way the investors want it, and besides, she’ll get half when they get married.
That’s a two-fer, because it includes his dangling carrot of marriage, which he brings up to keep her in line but then ignores when she wants to set a date or talk about their relationship. If it isn't in writing, it didn't happen.
5. Having a CFO leave because the CEO is cooking the books is bad. Not bothering to look, just accepting “he was too conservative” is sloppy, lazy business. Hello, Enron? Worldcom?
6. Your boyfriend fired you by email and told you to come in so you could work out your severance…and you believed him when he said the English-less janitorial staff threw away your portfolio of work?
Frankly, after all that, I didn’t understand why Maddy hadn't kicked him to the curb years earlier. And I found it hard to believe that she had all that much business acumen or judgment of any type. I certainly wouldn’t want her running my Fortune 500 company (which is what she’s doing at the epilogue).
I think Barrett was trying to make the ex as sleazy as possible and show that he really did her wrong, so the reader could see that Maddy going off the deep end was an understandable reaction. But she made him so sleazy that I couldn’t respect Maddy for staying with him. And what she showed me as a result of his character was in opposition to what she told me about Maddy. In the end, what Barrett showed me about the bad guy overroad anything that she told me about the sterling qualities of the heroine.
The malaprop wannabe convert to Judaism? Too painful. “Bagels and lockets” was supposed to be cute but just made me cringe.
In retrospect, I’d downgrade this to a C-, but only if I was feeling charitable, or grading up because I like the book cover (mmm, brownies). Otherwise, a D+.