Critical Faculties Engaged

The Man thinks my future as a book reviewer should be as a reviewer of Bad Books. Books that might get reviewed by Romance Writers of America or the Dumpstown Weekly or as a Read that, hated it passing mention in some snooty on-line culture emag. Or that might get seriously dissed in the special NYT reviewing of Kids' books because it deals "inappropriately" with YA issues. Or reviewed nowhere at all because the writer doesn't have any connections or friends of people in the trade or famous parents or infamous parents, for that matter. As in Paul Newman's daughter's doctor's shrink.

Well, I can accept that. Provisionally. I read a lot of books that only teenage girls or women would bother with because we know WHY WE READ. Can you spell "ESCAPE"? I'll sit here in my cold kitchen with the fog-iced wind blowing in the back door, reading about harem women, sheltering from the day's heat in clay rooms with two foot walls, as they eat figs and drink sultry sweet wines and wait for the apocalypse. My darling Pippa Grandgirl will sprawl in her Brooklyn 6' by 8' baking bedroom, reading about Laura Ingalls Wilder's father wading through six foot snowdrifts. Books can take you all sorts of places.

That said, here's my take on Patricia Gaffney's "Mad Dash".

Chick Lit, for sure. Irritating heroine, with redeeming qualities. Irritating hero, cute but basically clueless. These folks are in their 40's and she is bored out of her mind while he is too comfortable in his routine and his hypochondria.

You could write this book, yeah? Of course she takes off for awhile. Of course he doesn't understand and feels aggrieved and adrift. Of course each of them has a brief dalliance with someone who is breathtakingly the Wrong Person. There are dogs in this story but no cats.

The book is kind and sweet. I shed a few tears at the end for the peripheral, relentlessly cheerful, though old and frail, character, who had to have a major health episode in order to bring everyone round right.

Not such a bad book. Interesting musings on the contradictions in the life of Thomas Jefferson. If you're easily bored by people who should know better acting like pre-teens, skip it.