50 Shades of WTF...Girl?

"The Girl Before" or "It's all done in the worst possible taste"

You are going to be hearing a lot about this book in the next few months because it has been optioned as movie to be directed by Ron Howard.

And the only thing that I need to say to Ron is
"You've not actually read this have you?" 

And it's OK, I can sympathise, it must be tough to find new material.

What with Reece Witherspoon snapping up every promising new novel with the speed of the road runner on crack. 

What is a bloke to do?  It's the quick or the dead and you Ron, despite the occasional internet rumors to the contrary are clearly not dead. 

However the thing is once this movie comes out a lot of female people might be rather keen on altering your whole "living" situation.

The plot basically goes like this.

Two women, two stories, told in concert but a few months apart.  Both are recovering from traumatic events in their lives - well actually one of them not so much, she is just a big liar.  I'm not going to tell you what she lies about because you might be stuck on a deserted island with this festering pile of bollox as your only reading  material and I would hate to spoil the extremely distasteful "twist" for you.

Although my advice would be to use it ward off the sharks or make a fire with instead of you know, reading it…

The suspects: are a handsome brooding architect with a thing for ultra-minimalism and rough sex. 

The grieving former boyfriend of the one of the women (oh yeah, one of them is dead, but that isn't a spoiler since we find that out pretty much straight away).

And a house - which gets a character billing because there are a LOT of descriptions of the house, in some places the book reads like a real estate marketing campaign. This is unsurprising as the author used to work in advertising.

It's a sleek neat-freaks wet dream of a smart-wired house in the middle of London with 200 rules for the tenants and a killer (literally)floating staircase.
Designed by handsome brooding architect in the wake of the deaths of his wife and child in "mysterious circumstances".

Basically, Architect rents the house out but only to specific types of women, who are prepared to subject themselves to a spot of psychological profiling (how very Telecom in the nineties) and agree to abide by the aforementioned 200 rules.

Most of the rules revolve around maintaining the pristine and uncluttered nature of the dwelling.  Or as anyone who has ever co-habited with me for an extended period refers to it, "living with Jo"
So not that arduous really, I mean who doesn't like a tidy house?

The kicker is that none of these women last for very long, because either they are incapable of picking up their shit like normal human beings or they die in "mysterious circumstances".

Once you have guessed who the killer is - from the extensive list of two suspects - there isn't much left to do but marvel at writer's uncanny ability to combine "Architectural Digest" with "Obsessive Compulsives Monthly" into word salad.

A new genre has been unveiled, OCD erotica combined with house porn.  Now being low level OCD myself I should be totally down with that.

Lines like  "he arranged my spices in alphabetical order"  Phwoar!  "He took me across the uncluttered kitchen bench" Woof!

For anyone to take me on my kitchen bench they would first have to wait for half an hour whist I remove three months accumulated bumpf (none of it my own I might add) and give that bench a jolly good scrub with multiple cleaning products.   

By which point I suspect that the moment of spontaneous passion would have well  passed and the poor bloke have wandered off to grab a cold one and see what is happening on ESPN.

Also the Architect folds his clothes BEFORE sex - I think I just la petite mort-ed

So I am totally down with the OCD/neat freak factor.  It's the actual freak factor that is far less appealing.


Because approximately halfway through the book, out of a clear blue sky, this line happens:

"Yes Daddy, yes!"

In a sexually violent context.  Which she then goes on to describe as "the best sex of my life"

It's cool, you can go and throw up, I'll wait right here.

Feeling better?  Actually, I very much doubt that you are because there is NOTHING that makes that sentence OK.   The only possible reaction to it being "No, oh dear God, no".

What were you thinking Tony???? 

Because yep, this was written by a man - I see you JP Delaney AKA Tony Strong hiding behind your catchy EL James type pseudonym. 

Perhaps you chose it because pseudo-erotica written by a bloke named Tony would have less allure for the female audience.   However at least you had been more upfront in your naming conventions it would make it easier for women to avoid this piece of misogynistic (and possibly even dangerous) tripe.

Ron, mate, do yourself a favour, write pervy old Tony a "dear Tony" letter and consider optioning this instead, because it is funny as…well…f*ck and the writer appears to like women - despite possibly never having had sex in his life.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Belinda-Blinked-passion-business-removing-ebook/dp/B00UO7WOAS

Get these guys http://www.mydadwroteaporno.com/ to direct and produce it for you while lie on a beach somewhere (with plenty of Factor 50 on - because…. ginger) and contemplate #betterliterarychoices whist reading this excellent article about what women REALLY want:

http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/advice/a9641/things-men-dont-know-about-women-caitlin-moran/

Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon

The literary trend that needs to be gone......girl

Apparently inserting the word “girl” into the title of your mediocre, neither psychological nor particularly thrilling “psychological thriller”  has become the lazy writers click bait equivalent of inserting a touch of light B&D into your novel about the origins of space travel in order to cater to the 50 Shades aficionados. Something along the lines of “The Astronaut Who Flogged Me” or “50 Shades of Zero Gravity”.

Incidentally the best thing to happen as a result of "FSOG" can be found here https://twitter.com/50nerdsofgrey

Obviously it makes sense to take full advantage of the trend du jour, if you are a writer, especially a self-published writer, any hook that is likely to draw a ready made audience is not to be lightly passed over.  Titles are important.  I doubt that “50 Shades” would have done as well had the title more accurately reflected the content.   The vast majority of women would not be panting after something entitled “Creepy Sadomasochist Preys On Vulnerable College Student” and if they were to click download on that sucker then they would more than likely find themselves on one of those lists that Government agencies deny all knowledge of.

I am calling out "50 Shades" because in a similar way that that (ahem) novel, opened the door for a slew of imitators eager to cash in the shocking discovery that some women actually quite enjoy being tied up during sex with self absorbed, monosyllabic men,  the majority of these hastily churned out “girl” books are at best unoriginal and at worst downright dull.

“The brilliant new thriller with the heart stopping twist that you will not see coming”  thunder the blurbs.  Except that you can see the “twist” coming from space and the heroine is so unlikeable that you find yourself rooting for the villain.

Which is another trend in these books, the deeply flawed female protagonist, she’s an alcoholic, she's a closet sex maniac, she has a dark past,  she hates small children and kicks puppies – or even better - she is all of those things and she murdered her abusive former partner and buried him under a pile of clichés. 

Whilst I understand and applaud the move towards more relatable heroines, there are limits to a reader's tolerance for deeply unpleasant characters

And it can be done well, Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, possibly one of the most over-romanticised novels in literary history, is an incredibly flawed character, and all the more lovable for it.  
The problem is that many of the “girls” in these novels are so fundamentally awful that it is difficult to muster the smallest grain of sympathy for any of them. 

Also, I’m sorry ladies but if you are over the age of 30, which all of these characters are, you are not a “girl” anymore dammit, you are a grown arse woman, and you need to start behaving like one instead of wafting about in an alcoholic, pill fuelled, fugue state, sleeping with blatantly horrible men whose faces you can't remember and wondering why everyone else in the novel is apparently trying to kill you. 

It is because you are annoying, borderline psychotic, drink ALL of the wine at parties...and your character arch is severely underdeveloped. 

Also you probably slept with your best friend's husband only you can't remember doing that, because you know, drunk.

Mystery solved.

Now would you all kindly go away so that my Kindle can start recommending some decent novels.

PS: In the interests of fairness, I loved Gone Girl and I did not see the twist coming, likewise The Girl on The Train (to a lesser extent).  Obviously there are some excellent examples of this genre – so far I have found two. If you have more please feel to share in the comments.

For my next post - a review of a novel that manages to combine the "girl" genre with "50 Shades" to plumb new levels of misogynistic "ick". 

It's getting hot in here

To hot desk or not to hot desk - that is the question:

Is the free range office a marvel of modern ingenuity or an evil scourge leading to seething undercurrents of resentment and barely suppressed homicidal impulses?

We humans are by nature creatures of habit.  We like to have a place to call home.  Give a person a desk and they will instantly begin to colonise ever available centimetre.

Just ask any harassed IT worker who has had to fight their way through a cluster of spouse/baby/pet photos, three coffee mugs (two used), five years of novelty Secret Santa gifts, a slew of cuddly toys and a copy of
"Hot-desking for Dummies" in order to locate the "turn it off and back on again" switch.

It is hardly surprising that being forced to hot desk brings out the worst in the majority of us.

The office becomes a thinly veiled battle ground, every man, woman and Salesperson for themselves as homeless workers roam the halls and stairwells clutching open laptops and swearing like sailors as they search for unoccupied pods.  All the while shooting looks of burning resentment at the clueless visitors from the Hawkes Bay who flew in at at the crack of dawn and are now occupying whatever prime pieces of real estate the "regulars" had begun to think of as their own due to having managed to secure a few days worth of uninterrupted occupation prior to the arrival of the interlopers. 

More astute desk hunters have been known to coerce early rising colleagues into saving “their” desks for them.  This practice usually consists of someone placing a company issue notebook in the middle of the desk with a pen on top of it to imply that the occupant has simply stepped away for a moment.  

As all office workers know this is the equivalent of reserving a pool lounger at 5.00 am using a hotel issue beach towel and a 30 year old Jilly Cooper paperback from the hotel “library”.    It is not cricket and if you do it on the regular your co-workers will hate both you and the person that you have lured into your evil scheme.

After 40 minutes of wandering like Jesus in the wilderness, one of the lost tribe identifies a vacant space.  This space is most likely located directly beneath a single flickering fluorescent bulb sitting with the team that everyone in the office refers to as “those weird dudes who smell like tuna”.

Once a desk has been discovered a veritable maelstrom of activity ensues.  Used coffee cups are returned to the kitchen, monitor height and angles are adjusted, laptop display settings are re-set, the  "ergonomically personalised chair" which was ergonomically personalised two days previously, at great expense, for someone who sat there for two days, is repeatedly wound up and down and the backrest is readjusted.   These activities inevitably resulting in chair ending up roughly five centimetres from the ground with the seat at an angle that is perfectly ergonomically suited to a giraffe astronaut.

Nigel often wondered if the Careers Adviser had misheard him when he said that he wanted to work with Astroturf

All of this takes place to the accompaniment of muffled cursing and occasional outbursts of “FFS why can’t people learn to CLEAN UP AFTER THEMSELVES” followed by the furious banging of keyboard on desk in an attempt to dislodge a month’s worth of dining al desko toast crumbs.

Depending upon the level of OCD next steps may involve theatrical stomping to the stationery cupboard to retrieve the office’s single container of “dehydrated to the point of utter uselessness because some bastard left the lid open" sanitising wipes.  Much ostentatious swiping of all exposed surfaces ensues . 

The truly committed have been known to accessorise in the equivalent of a full hazmat suit prior carrying out these tasks. 

When they are finally satisfied that the desk meets their rigorous hygiene standards they sit down, open their laptop, and start typing…………an email to the entire office complaining about the state in which they found “their” desk in this morning and how “people really need to stop being such disgusting *Pigs”. 

It is now 9.45 am.

So there you have it, hot desks, improving efficiency and increasing productivity since,......whenever some complete idiot who couldn't find their usual desk invented it by accident.

*NB For obvious reasons “Pig” also belongs on the list of non-office friendly animals – see previous post.