Book-It 'o11! Book #27
The Fifty Books Challenge, year three! (Years one and two, just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: So Much Pretty: A Novel by Cara Hoffman
Details: Copyright 2011, Simon & Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "When she disappeared from her rural hometown, Wendy White was a sweet, family-oriented girl, a late bloomer who’d recently moved out on her own, with her first real boyfriend and a job waiting tables at the local tavern. It happens all the time-a woman goes missing, a family mourns, and the case remains unsolved.
Stacy Flynn is a reporter looking for her big break. She moved east from Cleveland, a city known for its violent crime, but that’s the last thing she expected to cover in Haeden. This small, upstate New York town counts a dairy farm as its main employer and is home to families who’ve set down roots and never left-people who don’t take kindly to outsiders. Flynn is researching the environmental impact of the dairy, and the way money flows outward like the chemical runoff, eventually poisoning those who live at the edges of its reach.
Five months after she disappeared, Wendy’s body is found in a ditch just off one of Haeden’s main roads. Suddenly, Flynn has a big story, but no one wants to talk to her. No one seems to think that Wendy’s killer could still be among them. A drifter, they say. Someone “not from here.”
Fifteen-year-old Alice Piper is an imaginative student with a genius IQ and strong ideals. The precocious, confident girl has stood out in Haeden since the day her eccentric hippie parents moved there from New York City, seeking a better life for their only child. When Alice reads Flynn’s passionate article in the Haeden Free Press about violence against women-about the staggering number of women who are killed each day by people they know-she begins to connect the dots of Wendy’s disappearance and death, leading her to make a choice: join the rest in turning a blind eye, or risk getting involved. As Flynn and Alice separately observe the locals’ failure to acknowledge a murderer in their midst, Alice’s fate is forever entwined with Wendy’s when a second crime rocks the town to its core.
Stylishly written, closely observed, and bracingly unexpected, So Much Pretty leads the reader into the treacherous psychology of denial, where the details of an event are already known, deeply and intuitively felt, but not yet admitted to, reconciled or revealed. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: This popped up as a suggestion when I was wading through true crime books recently.
How I Liked It: I didn't realize this was the author's first novel until after I'd finished the book, but looking back, it makes sense. Obviously, not all first time novelists make these makes nor are such mistakes limited to the first time novelist, but such is a common enough happenstance to make that assumption.
A lot of narrative chances are taken here (we are transported in almost every other chapter through the past in a non-linear fashion; it's your chore as a reader to keep up with how old certain characters are, which characters are which, and what narrative strain you're witnessing) and for the most part, they do not pay off. The inserts of police reports and witness statements, generally handy filler of a first-timer, largely do not pay off and come off as just that-- filler-- rather than insight into the characters.
Speaking of characters, the author favors a vast cast that widens and deepens as the book goes on, but we aren't really given enough of any to genuinely care. We learn Alice's parents' past as the book goes on, but the intricacies of the relationships within their friend sphere just get confusing and are never really elaborated on, particularly in a way that ties in to the plot.
As for quality of character, the book feeds into stereotypes so cartoonish they'd make a b-movie. Our lead protagonist, reporter Stacy Flynn, physically resembles author Cara Hoffman down to her (remarked-upon) choice of eyewear (it's worth noting that Hoffman herself worked as an investigative reporter in rural New York state, reporting on, surprise! environmental politics and crime). So it's probably safe to say Flynn is going to be a bit of a Mary Sue. Yet somehow, the author manages to make her as two-dimensional as the rest of the cast. It'd be impossible to suggest that the author skews one way or another politically, as both sides (generally, the cast is divided into warring sides: the rural insiders and the urban outsiders) are depicted in such abysmal stereotypes. The townsfolk are plebeian racists suspicious and uninterested in dangerous higher education. Those hailing from the city are hippie kooks and anarchists, whose almost aggressively quirky ways are so dangerous in such a place they can't help but result in tragedy. Flynn, the big city reporter in a small town, is portrayed as a shrill feminist outsider, her black hair and blue eyes remarked upon as "suspicious of miscegenation" (as all rural folk have their eyes pealed for and the "ethnics" have a certain temper). Her article listing of crimes-against-women statistics in the local paper after a young woman's murder can't help but result in chaos as basic enlightenment appalls and disgusts the townsfolk (the book is set largely in spring 2009-- apparently we are to believe these people don't pay much attention to television, the Internet, or any outside media whatsoever).
As for the plot itself, the middling time jumps don't serve any real purpose to the insight of the characters, and the changing voice of narration is confusing rather than enlightening (the bold-face name at the top of each chapter appears more and more desperate as the book wears on), particularly with the time skips and the broadening cast.
Possibly the only redemption of the book is an almost shocking (and refreshing) twist in the third quarter, but as it plays out, it serves to only highlight the greater failures of the book: a cartoonish cast of ubiquitous stereotypes and too many loose ends never tied.
A somewhat feeble epilogue (set in the future, no less) is offered for one story arc and serves to only pose more questions than it answers. In many cases, that can actually work in a book's favor, even unwittingly opening the way for a sequel or even a series.
But like many of the risky narrative choices the author employs in this book (shifting voice, time skips, a large and attemptedly diverse cast), it simply just doesn't work.
Notable: After Flynn's incendiary article appears, she's chewed out by the paper's veteran reporter (he's called "Scoop" and lacks basic personal grooming habits and an enlightened attitude towards women and minorities; of course he does) and responds in her most stereotyped elitist-clueless-outsider-troublemaker-shrill-feminist-progressive moment of the entire book.
“"You are not the publisher OR the editor of this paper anymore," Flynn said. "I answer to Weekly Circular, and they're not going to fucking fire me! They're going to give me a motherfucking RAISE for the work I did no this Podunk white-trash bullshit! I won a George Polk when I was only twenty-three. Do you even know what that IS? Or did you just read it on my resume and think I made it up? The paper I worked for employed actual fucking writers. And what I fucking wrote yesterday was a real story. One I am going to keep investigating, so you might want to change your fucking tune. Stat."
Scoop felt his face flush. He raised the paper again and clutched it in his fist. "Do you have any idea what this has done to this community? To the families in this community? To people's professional careers?"
"WHAT community? Is there a COMMUNITY here? Don't you fucking get it? Are you from fucking Mars? When the average income level is fourteen K and the average educational level is eleventh grade and the so-called dairy farm is a factory fucking farm that employs next to nobody in town, and the Home Depot is where you all fucking work-- IF you fucking work. THAT'S not a community, and it doesn't become one because people shoot clay pigeons or endearingly call women 'the missus' or have fucking parades where they crown a dairy queen! That's for actors in some anachronistic passion play about a town that never was, in a country that never, ever fucking was."
Scoop was overwhelmed by how fast she was talking and how quickly she had become furious. He had come here to reprimand her, and she wasn't the slightest bit concerned. She didn't even look like herself. her eyes were slits and she could see how hard her jaw was; the skin on her neck and chest was flushed and blotchy, but her face had gone white. She wasn't about to stop.
"Community? Professional careers? Are you talking about your large-animal vet coroner who didn't show because he was yakking it up over at the Haytes dairy? Or your buddy who fucked up every aspect of this investigation, thinking that the killer was some drifter? You ever even heard the word 'drifter' outside a couple movies from the 1950s? You don't have a community, and you don't have professionals. Do you even know where you are? DO you?"” (pgs 212 and 213)
(NOTE: All large capitalized words appeared in the original text in italics instead; to get them to show up in my HTML with the emphasis Hoffman intended, I had to alter the format to all caps and a size larger than the rest of the text.)
While author Cara Hoffman's own biography is thankfully different enough as to not be identical to Flynn's, one can't help but wonder, for instance, if Stacy Flynn's "George Polk" is meant to be Hoffman's New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.
Title: So Much Pretty: A Novel by Cara Hoffman
Details: Copyright 2011, Simon & Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "When she disappeared from her rural hometown, Wendy White was a sweet, family-oriented girl, a late bloomer who’d recently moved out on her own, with her first real boyfriend and a job waiting tables at the local tavern. It happens all the time-a woman goes missing, a family mourns, and the case remains unsolved.
Stacy Flynn is a reporter looking for her big break. She moved east from Cleveland, a city known for its violent crime, but that’s the last thing she expected to cover in Haeden. This small, upstate New York town counts a dairy farm as its main employer and is home to families who’ve set down roots and never left-people who don’t take kindly to outsiders. Flynn is researching the environmental impact of the dairy, and the way money flows outward like the chemical runoff, eventually poisoning those who live at the edges of its reach.
Five months after she disappeared, Wendy’s body is found in a ditch just off one of Haeden’s main roads. Suddenly, Flynn has a big story, but no one wants to talk to her. No one seems to think that Wendy’s killer could still be among them. A drifter, they say. Someone “not from here.”
Fifteen-year-old Alice Piper is an imaginative student with a genius IQ and strong ideals. The precocious, confident girl has stood out in Haeden since the day her eccentric hippie parents moved there from New York City, seeking a better life for their only child. When Alice reads Flynn’s passionate article in the Haeden Free Press about violence against women-about the staggering number of women who are killed each day by people they know-she begins to connect the dots of Wendy’s disappearance and death, leading her to make a choice: join the rest in turning a blind eye, or risk getting involved. As Flynn and Alice separately observe the locals’ failure to acknowledge a murderer in their midst, Alice’s fate is forever entwined with Wendy’s when a second crime rocks the town to its core.
Stylishly written, closely observed, and bracingly unexpected, So Much Pretty leads the reader into the treacherous psychology of denial, where the details of an event are already known, deeply and intuitively felt, but not yet admitted to, reconciled or revealed. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: This popped up as a suggestion when I was wading through true crime books recently.
How I Liked It: I didn't realize this was the author's first novel until after I'd finished the book, but looking back, it makes sense. Obviously, not all first time novelists make these makes nor are such mistakes limited to the first time novelist, but such is a common enough happenstance to make that assumption.
A lot of narrative chances are taken here (we are transported in almost every other chapter through the past in a non-linear fashion; it's your chore as a reader to keep up with how old certain characters are, which characters are which, and what narrative strain you're witnessing) and for the most part, they do not pay off. The inserts of police reports and witness statements, generally handy filler of a first-timer, largely do not pay off and come off as just that-- filler-- rather than insight into the characters.
Speaking of characters, the author favors a vast cast that widens and deepens as the book goes on, but we aren't really given enough of any to genuinely care. We learn Alice's parents' past as the book goes on, but the intricacies of the relationships within their friend sphere just get confusing and are never really elaborated on, particularly in a way that ties in to the plot.
As for quality of character, the book feeds into stereotypes so cartoonish they'd make a b-movie. Our lead protagonist, reporter Stacy Flynn, physically resembles author Cara Hoffman down to her (remarked-upon) choice of eyewear (it's worth noting that Hoffman herself worked as an investigative reporter in rural New York state, reporting on, surprise! environmental politics and crime). So it's probably safe to say Flynn is going to be a bit of a Mary Sue. Yet somehow, the author manages to make her as two-dimensional as the rest of the cast. It'd be impossible to suggest that the author skews one way or another politically, as both sides (generally, the cast is divided into warring sides: the rural insiders and the urban outsiders) are depicted in such abysmal stereotypes. The townsfolk are plebeian racists suspicious and uninterested in dangerous higher education. Those hailing from the city are hippie kooks and anarchists, whose almost aggressively quirky ways are so dangerous in such a place they can't help but result in tragedy. Flynn, the big city reporter in a small town, is portrayed as a shrill feminist outsider, her black hair and blue eyes remarked upon as "suspicious of miscegenation" (as all rural folk have their eyes pealed for and the "ethnics" have a certain temper). Her article listing of crimes-against-women statistics in the local paper after a young woman's murder can't help but result in chaos as basic enlightenment appalls and disgusts the townsfolk (the book is set largely in spring 2009-- apparently we are to believe these people don't pay much attention to television, the Internet, or any outside media whatsoever).
As for the plot itself, the middling time jumps don't serve any real purpose to the insight of the characters, and the changing voice of narration is confusing rather than enlightening (the bold-face name at the top of each chapter appears more and more desperate as the book wears on), particularly with the time skips and the broadening cast.
Possibly the only redemption of the book is an almost shocking (and refreshing) twist in the third quarter, but as it plays out, it serves to only highlight the greater failures of the book: a cartoonish cast of ubiquitous stereotypes and too many loose ends never tied.
A somewhat feeble epilogue (set in the future, no less) is offered for one story arc and serves to only pose more questions than it answers. In many cases, that can actually work in a book's favor, even unwittingly opening the way for a sequel or even a series.
But like many of the risky narrative choices the author employs in this book (shifting voice, time skips, a large and attemptedly diverse cast), it simply just doesn't work.
Notable: After Flynn's incendiary article appears, she's chewed out by the paper's veteran reporter (he's called "Scoop" and lacks basic personal grooming habits and an enlightened attitude towards women and minorities; of course he does) and responds in her most stereotyped elitist-clueless-outsider-troublemaker-shrill-feminist-progressive moment of the entire book.
“"You are not the publisher OR the editor of this paper anymore," Flynn said. "I answer to Weekly Circular, and they're not going to fucking fire me! They're going to give me a motherfucking RAISE for the work I did no this Podunk white-trash bullshit! I won a George Polk when I was only twenty-three. Do you even know what that IS? Or did you just read it on my resume and think I made it up? The paper I worked for employed actual fucking writers. And what I fucking wrote yesterday was a real story. One I am going to keep investigating, so you might want to change your fucking tune. Stat."
Scoop felt his face flush. He raised the paper again and clutched it in his fist. "Do you have any idea what this has done to this community? To the families in this community? To people's professional careers?"
"WHAT community? Is there a COMMUNITY here? Don't you fucking get it? Are you from fucking Mars? When the average income level is fourteen K and the average educational level is eleventh grade and the so-called dairy farm is a factory fucking farm that employs next to nobody in town, and the Home Depot is where you all fucking work-- IF you fucking work. THAT'S not a community, and it doesn't become one because people shoot clay pigeons or endearingly call women 'the missus' or have fucking parades where they crown a dairy queen! That's for actors in some anachronistic passion play about a town that never was, in a country that never, ever fucking was."
Scoop was overwhelmed by how fast she was talking and how quickly she had become furious. He had come here to reprimand her, and she wasn't the slightest bit concerned. She didn't even look like herself. her eyes were slits and she could see how hard her jaw was; the skin on her neck and chest was flushed and blotchy, but her face had gone white. She wasn't about to stop.
"Community? Professional careers? Are you talking about your large-animal vet coroner who didn't show because he was yakking it up over at the Haytes dairy? Or your buddy who fucked up every aspect of this investigation, thinking that the killer was some drifter? You ever even heard the word 'drifter' outside a couple movies from the 1950s? You don't have a community, and you don't have professionals. Do you even know where you are? DO you?"” (pgs 212 and 213)
(NOTE: All large capitalized words appeared in the original text in italics instead; to get them to show up in my HTML with the emphasis Hoffman intended, I had to alter the format to all caps and a size larger than the rest of the text.)
While author Cara Hoffman's own biography is thankfully different enough as to not be identical to Flynn's, one can't help but wonder, for instance, if Stacy Flynn's "George Polk" is meant to be Hoffman's New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.