Love You Like That by Scarlett Cole
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Scarlett Cole is the unsung hero of the romance genre. With unique heroines, larger than life heroes and irresistible romance, she quickly seduces the heart. Love You Like That is the equivalent of what makes her stories addictive. From sweet to sultry to funny, Zoe and Alex slowly leave their mark on the senses. He's broody. She's inspiring. Together they are captivating.
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A Very Fake Christmas: A Billionaire Romance, Surprise Pregnancy by Scarlett Avery
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Prepare to be seduced. Scarlett Avery tempts hearts with romance but boy can she deliver the drama. A Very Fake Christmas eases you into the drama, but never let's go of the temptation. Zane and Shay takes the heart on a whirlwind journey of love, lust and secrets that threaten to deliver some serious heartache. From family upheaval to romance drama, A Very Fake Christmas is an explosive twist on holiday romance.
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This collection of Margaret Mitchell's correspondence succeeds largely on the strength of Mitchell's own wit and charm as a writer. It's also properly presented with lots of contextual information and historical lacunae filled in by a loving editor (I believe the introduction says he was her godson).
The actual subject matter of the letters - the making of, release, and aftermath of the movie Gone With The Wind - is actually slightly less interesting than one might suppose. That's because Mitchell took a strong stand, which I think was also a wise one, not to take any active role relating to the movie once the rights were sold. So a very great deal of the correspondence consists of her explaining, over and over again, that it's Mr. Selznick's movie not hers, and no, she cannot arrange auditions for aspirants to the role of Scarlett, etc. etc. She also had occasion to rebuke both the studio and various publications assuming she would automatically take an active role in the marketing of the movie.
That said, it was clearly not her intention to be actively obstructive, and she also had a vested interest in the movie's historical accuracy, since she had apparently put very substantial effort into that aspect of her book. So, despite herself, we see her being drawn into controversies over which way round a Mammy would wear her head kerchief, or whether Tara would have white pillars. In the end, she used her connections to supply the studio with local Atlanta experts, which seems to have worked well. This does not prevent, however, her complaints of the constant barrage of demands on her attention. In fact, she wrote no other novel, and one gets the sense that she blamed it largely on the decade-long fuss that attended the making, release, and subsequent re-release (in post-war Europe) of the movie. And then, of course, she died tragically early in a motor vehicle accident.
Mitchell is very much a woman of her time and place when it comes to racial matters, though of course even then there was a spectrum of behaviour, and she was on the more human end of it. She apparently liked Hattie McDaniel, and made an effort to have her invited to the post-premiere party in Atlanta, even though McDaniel was, shockingly, excluded from the Atlantic movie theatre (as all Black people were) for the premiere itself. Her conservatism and racism (mixed together) mostly make themselves felt in occasional remarks about the early Black rights leaders, whom she felt, presumably along with most white people of her class, to be a threat.
I would recommend this as a fairly interesting and on occasions quite amusing read to anyone interested in Hollywood history.
Door 16: St. Lucia's Day
Book: Read a book newly released in November or December of this year.
A strange, beautifully written, "What am I reading?" book.
A sort of modern-day "Picnic At Hanging Rock" but with eating disorders, trendy-but-hollow therapists and social media.
To enjoy "Oligarchy" I had to repress my urge to tag and classify, set aside the trope library that was unlocked by a blurb that spoke of the daughter of a Russian oligarch arriving at an English all-girl boarding school and then having one of her new friends "mysteriously vanish". The tropes were irrelevant and distracting. The blurb was inaccurate and perhaps deliberately misleading.
Fortunately, I found Scarlett Thomas' writing style and her narration compelling. My curiosity was charmed out of its basked like a cobra in thrawl to a flute.
At the half-way mark, I still had no firm grasp of what the book was about although by then I knew the things it wasn't: a thriller or a mystery or a typical coming-of-age at school story. I didn't mind this. The book felt like being in a dream. The thrust of the narrative came not from "then this happened" but from the evolving perceptions of a fifteen-year-old girl who is bright but whose grasp of the world is slight and semi-magical.
"Oligarchy", is a story about how the malleability of inchoate young girls can be exploited by a powerful few to shape them, figuratively and physically. It's a dark, often unpleasant story, soaked in the hormones and ignorance and group pressure that pervade this third-rate private school, where the lives of the girls are shaped by arbitrary rules and punishments and governed by the shadowy agendas of fathers and headmasters.
The story is told through the eyes of Natasha, a credible fifteen-year-old girl, who has been plucked from poverty in Russia by har newly-discovered oligarch father and dropped into a private school where she is supposed to become someone new.
I was impressed at how authentically adolescent Natasha's point of view was. Sometimes she understands things she should not. Sometimes she surrenders to ideas and behaviours that she knows are fake or wrong. She is always trying to plan who she should be and how she should fit in but often lacks the knowledge or experience to plan well. Natasha's analysis of the world, like those of the girls around her, is a pungent blend of fact, fantasy and magical thinking that heightens their awareness while keeping them vulnerable.
The private school is repulsive, a monument to decay, neglect and meaningless traditions. It is, in part, a metaphor for how those with power over them see the girls: as things to be sequestered, controlled and shaped rather than protected, developed and loved.
The relationship between the girls and food dominates the book. They obsess about diets, adopting them as a collective, collaborative ritual, design to keep them safe by making them desirable. There is a lot about eating disorders; w they manifest, how their caused by a pressure to be perfect and sustained through a social media culture on Instagram and Youtube that elevates anorexia as "Thinspiration".
This is disturbing in its own right but it is made more so by the veneer of concern and the faux science of the anti-anorexia campaigns the school launches. The trendy-five-years-ago-but-still-unchanged therapists are some of the most repugnant adults in the book.
All of this is set against a background of darker threats from the adult world: unexplained deaths in the school that the girls are forbidden to discuss, the odd agenda of the teachers and the headmaster and the shadowy activities of the Russian oligarchs in "Londongrad".
Oddly, the person who treats Natasha with the most compassion is her aunt, a solitary, body-conscious woman running her own cyber-security/hacking business. Her advice to Natasha is mainly always to ensure that she has more than one path available to her.
This is a book of experiences as well as ideas. It's not a comfortable read but it is a fascinating one.
Door 16: St. Lucia's Day
Book: Read a book... newly released in November or December of this year,
So far, the focus has been on the barely suppressed madness that occurs when fifteen-year-old girls are sent away from home and locked away in an institution that imposes random rules of behaviour, focused only on appearances, not substance. The girls are feral without being free.
I don't know where this is going but I like how it's getting there.
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