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| Bridesmaids, 2011 |
I blame 90's chick lit for many
things, including but not limited to:
Smoking Marlboro Lights
- White wine drinking
- Pasta making
- Using the word ‘team’ to describe putting together what you’re wearing
- Writing GOD AWFUL fiction in which a feisty heroine with man troubles has a choice between two men, one who is so obviously right for her, and one who is so obviously wrong for her
- Thinking that women that work in London only work in PR, journalism or publishing
- ‘Teaming’ tiny camisole vests with boot-cut jeans and a ‘long, thin cardigan’
- Being annoyed that I can’t afford Jo Malone scented candles, MAC lipstick, and designer flared trousers.
But you know what I blame you for
the most, 90s chick-lit? I blame you for my fucking stupid ideas about men and
relationships. Never mind Disney giving me unrealistic expectations of men, I
blame all those hundreds of cheap paperbacks I read for setting me up for a
life time of dating and love disappointment. The hard-work relationships I had
– they were just hard work. Dating a moody, emotionally closed-off man isn’t
exciting or sexy. It’s exhausting, and it depletes you. I get why the men in
these books are all really sexy and gorgeous looking, because it’s an aspirational, reader insert thing – a
plain ole me can get a sexy man who’s perfect type thing. Except we all know
that’s not really how it works. But no one wants to read about Miss Average
meeting Mr Average, do they? Anyway, on with the book.
I didn’t read Mr Maybe the first time round, but
within the first few pages, I felt a little rush of nostalgia and recognition. Aaah,
all the things were there. The single-girl basement flats, the Marlboro Lights,
white wine and M & S party snacks, and the ridiculously hot, perfect man.
Twenty-seven year old marriage-obsessed
Libby Mason works in PR (of course she does, because no-one in these books can
work in a call-centre, a secondary school teacher or a nurse, because, reasons
I’ll label as: ‘needs research, can’t be bothered’).
Libby meets Nick, a bedsit
dwelling, starving writer who lives ‘on the dole’ and spends his nights in the
pub with his ‘horrible’, [Libby’s words, not mine] crusty dole scrounging
friends.
Libby and Nick spend a passionate
few months together, with Libby kidding herself that she’s only into Nick because
he’s handsome and is amazing in bed. She’s worried that Nick’s got no money or
ambition - and what Libby really wants is a rich husband that can buy her a big
house and sports cars. When Nick dumps Libby, because he’s commitment phobic
and worried that Libby’s getting too attached, Libby falls apart. Then she
meets rich, posh Ed, who despite his moustache and rah-rah-rah demeanour could
be ‘The One’.
Libby doesn’t fancy Ed one tiny bit,
in fact his kisses make her feel sick. Despite being thirty-eight, Ed is
sexually inexperienced and can’t fuck Libby good like Nick used to. Green makes
Ed as hideously unlikeable as she can – he’s pompous, patronising, boring,
terrible in bed. Yet he’s still not as awful as Libby, who is shallow, snobby,
obsessed with looks and money, immature, a scrounger, as moody as a thirteen
year old girl, and lazy. Basically, Libby is a dick.
At one point in the book, Libby
describes herself as ‘the most self-aware person I know’ which made me laugh
out loud because I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be a joke or not. A
few chapters previously she had described how after her first sexual encounter
with Ed, she had told him, in painful detail, what he was doing wrong and how
annoyed she was about it. I’m not joking, her describing her bad mood about
Ed’s bedroom style goes on for about six pages. Crushing the self-awareness,
Libs.
Libby is totally obsessed with
being single, and constantly goes on about how she’s not complete or whole
because she’s on her own. She talks as though being single is the worst thing
that could happen to anyone, ever. This isn’t even a character arc, either – at
no point does Libby get comfortable with her own company except when being
alone gets her out of spending time with Ed. While the same accusation could be
levelled at Bridget Jones, I felt that at least Bridget (if only in the first
two books) actually liked her life and her own company. Every second that Libby
spends on her own is miserable. Why would a man want to date someone like
Libby? She is literally waiting at home by the phone for a man to come to her.
She has no hobbies (no shopping doesn’t count) She’s a bitch to her mum, and she’s
a whiny little brat. I don’t know many men that would find this appealing.
She also says that it’s totally
fine all Ed’s forty-something friends are ‘middle-aged and old enough to be her
parents’ because she’s ‘mature enough to handle it,’
Libby makes fun of Ed’s taste in
music, the way he talks, the way he looks, his body, and his personality. She’s
turned off when he’s affectionate towards her and turned on when he buys her
designer handbags. The whole time she’s with Ed, she’s thinking about waster
Nick.
I don’t understand why Nick can’t
have a job AND write his book, because it’s because what the rest of us have to
do. Why couldn’t Green have just given Nick a simple job instead of him
claiming benefits? It would have made him more likeable for a start. It also
perpetuates two myths 1) that claiming benefits is easy and 2) that it’s OK to
do it as long as you’re doing something worthwhile with your time, like writing
a novel that (spoiler alert) will eventually be published. I don’t think Jane
Green has ever claimed a benefit in her life, and doesn’t know anyone who has
either.
So yeah, second on the Unlikeable
Douche List (I’d actually place Ed the last on the list, because at least he
doesn’t pretend to be anything else other than a posh-boy pushover) is Nick.
Nick may be fantastically handsome and very
good at oral, but he’s also an insufferable dick, like Libby. From his
faux-leftie politics to hanging around in pubs ‘that aren’t even country-style
pubs’ (I don’t even know what that means) to his wishy-washy approach to
relationships, everything he says and does comes across as a big fat fake.
Nick has a mysteriously amazing
body, a washboard stomach, ‘cause everyone knows those happen when you sit
around in bedsits and pubs drinking beer, saying things like ‘I’m allergic to exercise’
(this book was written in the days when caring about your body was for losers).
Nick also says to Libby that she doesn’t need make-up, because she’s so
naturally pretty, unlike ‘some women who are total dogs without it,’
You know what gets my lady-boner
really hard? A man who criticizes and degrades women. Oh yeah baby, just like
that. Give me some more of that sexy, hot, casual misogyny.
I also didn’t know if Nick was supposed to be
one of those rich kids that rejects their parents’ wealth (except when they
need it to pay the rent) or if he’s genuinely… ‘poor’. Nick lets slip that he went
to public school - something that impresses super shallow Libby - but it’s not
clear how this was paid for. So it seems like it’s OK to date a poor person as
long as they are not really poor, just pretending to be. Nick and Libby deserve
each other if you ask me, and while two arseholes are together it means they
are not bothering anybody else with their arseholery.
Then there’s Libby’s best friend
Jules (who is in no way inspired by Bridget Jones’ best bud, Jude.) Jules is an
interior designer, because of course she is, and married to barrister Jamie. I
am not sure how old Jules and Jaime are supposed to be – I’m guessing the same
age as Libby. If so, then when did Jamie start training to be a barrister? When
he was ten? Or has he just qualified when this book starts? Because they live
in a massive posh flat and seem to have no money worries, so I it seems like
Jamie may have been a barrister for a while. Libby thinks that Jamie is cool
because he drinks and smokes and once confessed he wanted to be in a rock band,
which further reinforces my belief that Libby is actually 13, not 27.
I thought it was kind of funny
that Libby and her friends keep describing Ed as ‘way too straight’ when Libby herself
won’t even go into a pub that doesn’t serve cocktails or champagne. Thus, I am
not entirely sure that Green knows what ‘straight’ in that sense of the word
means. It’s more the kind of word that Nick’s crusty friends would use to
describe Libby.
There’s a lot of pointless,
long-winded, badly written dialogue in this book, where the characters say
things that no-one in real life would ever say, like your younger brother
asking you where your sex life is at.
‘High’lights
I was given chocolates by a very
keen man who arrived to pick me up and handed me a box of Milk Tray. I had to
give him ten out of ten for effort, but Milk Tray? They should have been
Belgian chocolates at the very least.
***
‘Jesus,
Libby!’ she says. He’s going to fall head over heels in love with you! I bet
he’s never met anyone like you before!’
I bet he
hasn’t either
***
The phone
rings just as I’ve finished applying a final coat of clear nail polish.
Couldn’t have gone for my beloved blues or greens – far too trendy for Ed.
***
[in a posh
restaurant with Ed] …stares at them in confusion and it’s quite amazing that he
really doesn’t have a clue who these people are. I mean, for God’s sake some of
the people that have walked in here tonight are the biggest stars of stage and
screen and Ed’s never seen any of them before in his life!
***
I’ve had enough. I’m twenty-seven
years old and I deserve to be with someone. I deserve to live in a beautiful
house, not a grotty little flat in Ladbroke Grove. I deserve to be with someone
who brings me flowers and buys me presents. I deserve to be in a couple,
someone’s other half.
****
[during a phone call between
Libby and Nick after they’ve split up, we start with Nick talking]
‘Yes. I’ve concluded that I’m
completely screwed up.’
‘So tell me something else I
didn’t know.’
‘Thanks!’ Indignant tone.
‘Pleasure!’ Light and breezy
tone.
‘So are we friends now?’ A
cautious tone.
***
[After Ed buys Libby a £1500
designer dress]
Fuck it. I don’t mind spending
the rest of my Saturday with him, evening included. I mean, Jesus Christ, for
£1, 500 it’s the very least I can do.
‘Fucking hell!’ says Jules.
‘Donna Karan? Fucking hell!’
‘I know, I know. Unbelievable.’
‘So did you kiss him to thank
him?’
***
I’d die if my mother came into
the office. Seriously. I’d want the ground beneath me to open and swallow me
up. She’d be an embarrassment. The suburban housewife from hell who wouldn’t
know what to say to my colleagues or how to say it.’
****
Libby says to Ed:
‘Unlike you I choose my friends
because of who they are , and not because of how much money they have or which
bloody public school they went to,’ (no Libby, that’s how you choose your boyfriends!)
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| This is all your fault, Bridget |
If someone had told me that a
teenage girl had written this book, I wouldn’t be surprised. There’s! A! Lot! Of
! These!!!! Still, I found myself wanting to carry on reading, but in the same
way you can’t help rubbernecking at car crashes. There’s too many confusing run-on
sentences which require two or three readings before you can make sense of
them, and plenty of errors that should
have been caught during editing.
Here, Libby is describing her flat:
‘There’s an L shaped kitchen off
the living room, a galley kitchen, open plan and opposite the large window
there are french (sic) doors leading into a bedroom’
I had to read this a few times
and I am still not sure if Libby has an L shaped kitchen, and open plan one, a
galley one, or if she has 3 kitchens in her tiny basement flat that’s so small
it has one of those Murphy beds.
I read Mr Maybe over the course of a sick day, looking for something
easily enjoyable to pass a day where it was hard to sleep because I couldn’t
breathe through my nose. And I did enjoy Mr
Maybe, I enjoyed getting enraged about it because it took my mind of
feeling shitty, and I love a chance to deface a book with comments scrawled
over the pages in angry biro.
Scores on the doors: 1/5 for cold distracting properties.
Dishonourable mentions:
Primrose Hill
Constant Liam and Patsy references
(they divorced in 2000, the year after this book was published)
Libby and Jules’ weird eating
disorder enabling relationship
Sex scenes written a little bit
in the style of a medical text book
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| The 90's Dream Team - Patsy Kensit and Liam Gallagher 1997 Vanity Fair cover |
