Sweet Valley High #2 Secrets; or I’ll take my sociopathy with a side of narcissism
“You are entering the realm which is unusual.” --Futurama
Okay, by book #2 we all know a little about the co-dependent twins and their unhealthy, unhealthy relationship. My old psychology class would have had a field day with them. Actually, they probably would have laughed and laughed at me for bringing up SVH, but I digress. Also, I just noticed there’s no twinsperfectsizesixmatchingblondhairandblueeyes intro. Has the world stopped spinning? Is the sky still blue outside? Did this book come from a Farnsworth Parabox where the twins have mousy brown hair and weigh 400 pounds each? I don’t know. And I was going to do this wonderful babelfish translation of the intro. Maybe next time. I miss the description of the twin’s perfectly slim bodies and how they achieved their thinness through internal parasites.
“There are guys in the background of Mary Worth comics who are more important than me.”
This one focuses on Enid. She has caught flack on other forums and blogs for being a bore and having bad hair. I felt a little sorry for her...until I read this book. Enid starts off crying because she just realised she’s going to be stuck being besties with Liz for the next ten or so years that Junior year of SVH proves to be. I can just imagine her at home in her room at night: ‘Dear Diary, it’s only book #2, I’m fucked.’ Alex and freshman year can’t come fast enough. At the moment, she is following Liz's example and is a Doormat-in-training. Her whole sense of self worth revolves around being Ronnie's girlfriend. Because in FrancineLand you don’t exist if you don’t have a boyfriend. All I can think is, Francine, you’re making Germaine Greer cry. And Ronnie ain't much of a catch; he's jealous, possessive, and he gets a bit date-rapey when he and Enid drive out to Miller's Point. What is it with SVH boys (Ronnie, Bruce, Suzanne's boyfriend towards Jess in New York) and violently pushing a girl to go to far, yet no one ever thinks badly about them? Gah. I have a feeling that one of them will grow up to be Patrick Bateman (Jess would soooo go out with him). To be fair, there is only one of two ways for a guy to express his love in SV: violently force yourself onto a girl; or talk in a husky voice to her. I guess it beats all that chin tipping going on in the BSC books.
The only interesting aspect of Enid's personality is she used to be wild and quite the druggie...yet she wants no one to know about this. She has no clue. It certainly isn’t her hair that’s keeping all her friends interested. Then in swoops Jess, who is in running with Enid (with a lot of other no-names the ghostwriter doesn’t even bother to mention) for Promiscuity Queen--sorry, Prom Queen. Being that Jess is a myspace attention seeker, she has to win. And so she sneakily tells everyone Enid's secret, which is funny, as no one really cares except for Liz and Ronnie. Still, before you know it, Enid’s looking for the nearest suicide booth to drop a quarter into.
“You have to give guys a chance. Sometimes you meet a guy and think he's a pig, but then later on you realize he actually has a really good body.” --Futurama
Onto Jess, or as I now call her Jessociopath. She keeps the plot rolling by manipulating everyone in her path. The plot is pretty slim pickings except for her actions. At 118 pages, if you removed Jess from the picture, this would have been a 20 page SVH chapbook. How do I compare thee to a sociopath? Let me count the ways…1 She keeps Winston on a string, even though she doesn't like him, because he "might come in handy one of these days." 2 She reads Enid's private mail, then passes it around for others to read also. 3 She lets Liz take the flack for Enid's secret being leaked, and even lies to Liz's face about who did it. Sweet Zombie Jesus! Oh Jess, I love to hate her, and hate that I love her. Yet somehow, all this manipulation goes pear-shaped. Although, since she spends all her time musing on how she looks like Bo Derek, it’s no wonder her harebrained schemes implode like the gravitational collapse of a star. They seemed to be composed entirely of:
Phase 1: Plot to intentionally screw up someone’s life
Phase 2: …
Phase 3: Profit
But then, Jess’s morals are a black hole entirely of themselves. The fact that black holes pull in matter from their environment, well, we have Liz for proof of that: it wouldn’t be Sweet Valley if Jess didn’t drag Liz into one of her monumental pissweak fiascos each book.
Later Liz gets back at Jess. Which is one of the most memorable things about these earlier SVH books when you’re on a nostalgia kick. Liz somehow always turns the tables on Jess by the end of the book and you feel all's right with the world again. Still, Liz's revenge was a little cruel concerning Winston. She's basically using Winston to embarrass Jess. And as much as I like Jess humiliated, I don't think you should use people unwittingly to do it. Winston is like the coolest guy at SVH, leave him alone.
“That young man fills me with hope. Plus some other emotions which are weird and deeply confusing.” --Zap Brannigan
Okay, guys. I, at least, had the good sense not to like Ronnie when I first read this book at age ten. Although, I do admit Bruce intimidated me a bit when I was younger. Now he comes off as Zap Brannigan lovin’, William Shatner singin’ overkill. Todd is blah, but then he's always blah. George is a god. Or maybe he just comes off as that when he’s standing next to drab Eeny. Ken may quite well be mistaken for a mannequin, factoring in how much he appears in this book, yet has little to no dialogue. But Winston is still my favourite. Only someone like Winston could save the day when Liz and Mr Collins were all flummoxed about how to prove Suzanne was satan incarnate. While I’m missing Amy’s boy-crazed batshit insanity, at least I have Bruce to laugh at. Him and has natty little porsche.
Points of interest:
*Funniest moment: On page 2, Jess is dressing for a date with Tom McKay. Oh Jess, you have no idea…
*B-plot of the week: Ms Dalton is youngish and not a total fug, so naturally, she must be having an affair with a student. Gotta love those SVH morals. If you wear your hair loose and flowing down your back, god help you, you are a raging whore. And if you dare to date more than one boy a week like Annie, you may as well be down in Tijuana doing live donkey acts.Where’s Jeri Blank when I need her?
* Liz getting the smackdown from Enid. Love it. Proves Liz's complete doormattishness if she'll let Enid kick her around.
* Alice’s blasé cut-and-paste attitude towards Jess’s little hissy in the kitchen. Either the ghostwriter’s phoning it in or Alice just doesn’t care anymore. After raising Jess for sixteen years, I suspect the latter. Considering she’s facing ten more years of Jess at sixteen, maybe Alice is another candidate for the suicide booth.
*The magical appearance of siblings for both Todd and Enid. Boy, the SV parents like popping them out, then pushing them back in again. Oh, well, they’ll disappear in a few books time. Best not to think about it too carefully, might induce brain failure.
* Liz buts on the bitch hat, when thinking about Jess’s offer to talk to an upset Enid: “‘Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt. Everything is so screwed up now, nothing and no one could possibly make it worse.’ Not even you, she added silently.” Burn!
*best outfit: "Tonight [Dana] was decked out in tight black velvet jeans, a pair of sparkly pink leg warmers, and a purple satin blouse." An outfit after my own fourth grade heart.
*Why is Caroline Pearce in Pi Beta Alpha if no one likes her?
*The dated 'feminist' rhetoric is very amusing, though I'm a little worried it may have warped me growing up. The talk of “A woman doesn’t reach her peak until she’s in her thirties” is positively scandalous compared to Jess’s breast peeking out in book #3. And it’s the most intelligent thing Francine has ever written about women
*This book had great nostalgic value. The pink and yellow cover (with Liz who looks like she's about to eat a Malteser, or maybe she's reacting to Jess's new job as a phone sex operator) is burned into my brain.
“‘The end.’ There. Now they’re trapped in a book I wrote. A crummy world of plot holes and spelling errors.” --Futurama
Minor footnote, I did find a passage to babelfish my heart out in:
Trim, tanned Alice Wakefield could easily have been mistaken for the twins’ older sister. They shared the same beautiful all American looks, down to the honey coloured hair…
Japanese translation
Perhaps the trim, Alice Wakefield whom it is sunburned by mistake it was for the sisters where the twins are older easily. They the same it shares in the hair of color of the honey are beautiful all America at first glance,…
Greek translation
The blackened Alice Wakefield could easily have perplexed itself with the older brother of twins. They were shared same the beautiful all American they look at, under in the honey - colored hair…
Okay, by book #2 we all know a little about the co-dependent twins and their unhealthy, unhealthy relationship. My old psychology class would have had a field day with them. Actually, they probably would have laughed and laughed at me for bringing up SVH, but I digress. Also, I just noticed there’s no twinsperfectsizesixmatchingblondhairandblueeyes intro. Has the world stopped spinning? Is the sky still blue outside? Did this book come from a Farnsworth Parabox where the twins have mousy brown hair and weigh 400 pounds each? I don’t know. And I was going to do this wonderful babelfish translation of the intro. Maybe next time. I miss the description of the twin’s perfectly slim bodies and how they achieved their thinness through internal parasites.
“There are guys in the background of Mary Worth comics who are more important than me.”
This one focuses on Enid. She has caught flack on other forums and blogs for being a bore and having bad hair. I felt a little sorry for her...until I read this book. Enid starts off crying because she just realised she’s going to be stuck being besties with Liz for the next ten or so years that Junior year of SVH proves to be. I can just imagine her at home in her room at night: ‘Dear Diary, it’s only book #2, I’m fucked.’ Alex and freshman year can’t come fast enough. At the moment, she is following Liz's example and is a Doormat-in-training. Her whole sense of self worth revolves around being Ronnie's girlfriend. Because in FrancineLand you don’t exist if you don’t have a boyfriend. All I can think is, Francine, you’re making Germaine Greer cry. And Ronnie ain't much of a catch; he's jealous, possessive, and he gets a bit date-rapey when he and Enid drive out to Miller's Point. What is it with SVH boys (Ronnie, Bruce, Suzanne's boyfriend towards Jess in New York) and violently pushing a girl to go to far, yet no one ever thinks badly about them? Gah. I have a feeling that one of them will grow up to be Patrick Bateman (Jess would soooo go out with him). To be fair, there is only one of two ways for a guy to express his love in SV: violently force yourself onto a girl; or talk in a husky voice to her. I guess it beats all that chin tipping going on in the BSC books.
The only interesting aspect of Enid's personality is she used to be wild and quite the druggie...yet she wants no one to know about this. She has no clue. It certainly isn’t her hair that’s keeping all her friends interested. Then in swoops Jess, who is in running with Enid (with a lot of other no-names the ghostwriter doesn’t even bother to mention) for Promiscuity Queen--sorry, Prom Queen. Being that Jess is a myspace attention seeker, she has to win. And so she sneakily tells everyone Enid's secret, which is funny, as no one really cares except for Liz and Ronnie. Still, before you know it, Enid’s looking for the nearest suicide booth to drop a quarter into.
“You have to give guys a chance. Sometimes you meet a guy and think he's a pig, but then later on you realize he actually has a really good body.” --Futurama
Onto Jess, or as I now call her Jessociopath. She keeps the plot rolling by manipulating everyone in her path. The plot is pretty slim pickings except for her actions. At 118 pages, if you removed Jess from the picture, this would have been a 20 page SVH chapbook. How do I compare thee to a sociopath? Let me count the ways…1 She keeps Winston on a string, even though she doesn't like him, because he "might come in handy one of these days." 2 She reads Enid's private mail, then passes it around for others to read also. 3 She lets Liz take the flack for Enid's secret being leaked, and even lies to Liz's face about who did it. Sweet Zombie Jesus! Oh Jess, I love to hate her, and hate that I love her. Yet somehow, all this manipulation goes pear-shaped. Although, since she spends all her time musing on how she looks like Bo Derek, it’s no wonder her harebrained schemes implode like the gravitational collapse of a star. They seemed to be composed entirely of:
Phase 1: Plot to intentionally screw up someone’s life
Phase 2: …
Phase 3: Profit
But then, Jess’s morals are a black hole entirely of themselves. The fact that black holes pull in matter from their environment, well, we have Liz for proof of that: it wouldn’t be Sweet Valley if Jess didn’t drag Liz into one of her monumental pissweak fiascos each book.
Later Liz gets back at Jess. Which is one of the most memorable things about these earlier SVH books when you’re on a nostalgia kick. Liz somehow always turns the tables on Jess by the end of the book and you feel all's right with the world again. Still, Liz's revenge was a little cruel concerning Winston. She's basically using Winston to embarrass Jess. And as much as I like Jess humiliated, I don't think you should use people unwittingly to do it. Winston is like the coolest guy at SVH, leave him alone.
“That young man fills me with hope. Plus some other emotions which are weird and deeply confusing.” --Zap Brannigan
Okay, guys. I, at least, had the good sense not to like Ronnie when I first read this book at age ten. Although, I do admit Bruce intimidated me a bit when I was younger. Now he comes off as Zap Brannigan lovin’, William Shatner singin’ overkill. Todd is blah, but then he's always blah. George is a god. Or maybe he just comes off as that when he’s standing next to drab Eeny. Ken may quite well be mistaken for a mannequin, factoring in how much he appears in this book, yet has little to no dialogue. But Winston is still my favourite. Only someone like Winston could save the day when Liz and Mr Collins were all flummoxed about how to prove Suzanne was satan incarnate. While I’m missing Amy’s boy-crazed batshit insanity, at least I have Bruce to laugh at. Him and has natty little porsche.
Points of interest:
*Funniest moment: On page 2, Jess is dressing for a date with Tom McKay. Oh Jess, you have no idea…
*B-plot of the week: Ms Dalton is youngish and not a total fug, so naturally, she must be having an affair with a student. Gotta love those SVH morals. If you wear your hair loose and flowing down your back, god help you, you are a raging whore. And if you dare to date more than one boy a week like Annie, you may as well be down in Tijuana doing live donkey acts.Where’s Jeri Blank when I need her?
* Liz getting the smackdown from Enid. Love it. Proves Liz's complete doormattishness if she'll let Enid kick her around.
* Alice’s blasé cut-and-paste attitude towards Jess’s little hissy in the kitchen. Either the ghostwriter’s phoning it in or Alice just doesn’t care anymore. After raising Jess for sixteen years, I suspect the latter. Considering she’s facing ten more years of Jess at sixteen, maybe Alice is another candidate for the suicide booth.
*The magical appearance of siblings for both Todd and Enid. Boy, the SV parents like popping them out, then pushing them back in again. Oh, well, they’ll disappear in a few books time. Best not to think about it too carefully, might induce brain failure.
* Liz buts on the bitch hat, when thinking about Jess’s offer to talk to an upset Enid: “‘Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt. Everything is so screwed up now, nothing and no one could possibly make it worse.’ Not even you, she added silently.” Burn!
*best outfit: "Tonight [Dana] was decked out in tight black velvet jeans, a pair of sparkly pink leg warmers, and a purple satin blouse." An outfit after my own fourth grade heart.
*Why is Caroline Pearce in Pi Beta Alpha if no one likes her?
*The dated 'feminist' rhetoric is very amusing, though I'm a little worried it may have warped me growing up. The talk of “A woman doesn’t reach her peak until she’s in her thirties” is positively scandalous compared to Jess’s breast peeking out in book #3. And it’s the most intelligent thing Francine has ever written about women
*This book had great nostalgic value. The pink and yellow cover (with Liz who looks like she's about to eat a Malteser, or maybe she's reacting to Jess's new job as a phone sex operator) is burned into my brain.
“‘The end.’ There. Now they’re trapped in a book I wrote. A crummy world of plot holes and spelling errors.” --Futurama
Minor footnote, I did find a passage to babelfish my heart out in:
Trim, tanned Alice Wakefield could easily have been mistaken for the twins’ older sister. They shared the same beautiful all American looks, down to the honey coloured hair…
Japanese translation
Perhaps the trim, Alice Wakefield whom it is sunburned by mistake it was for the sisters where the twins are older easily. They the same it shares in the hair of color of the honey are beautiful all America at first glance,…
Greek translation
The blackened Alice Wakefield could easily have perplexed itself with the older brother of twins. They were shared same the beautiful all American they look at, under in the honey - colored hair…