Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie
My rating: 4/5 cats
yeah, i’m surprised, myself. but it’s a different kind of four-star cat rating. because while there were elements i thought were unsuccessful and dippy characters whose actions confused me, you don’t sit down and eat a tub of frosting with a wooden spoon and then complain about the aftertaste.
i just don’t usually have this much fun with the titles for the bodice rippers society. they are fine, but usually they are trying too hard to be sexxy, which is a total turn-off.
this one was goofier, and i think i responded to that, being that way inclined myself.
not that i am anything like any of the ladies in this book. i am not myself a headstrong woman who is attracted to a headstrong man and who considers an argument to be foreplay. i am not a young, bosomy blonde in a happy marriage to a considerably older man when i suddenly realize i am not, in fact, happy through the discovery of china egg cups with feet:
nor am i a drunk mystic or whatever-the-h margie was supposed to be.
this is what i imagine sex and the city was like, but with more murders and more noir set-pieces. it is a bunch of ladies sitting around talking frankly about vibrators and men, and their relationship problems, without admitting their own failures in these relationships. willful blindness FTW!!
because the women here aren’t helpless victims to big bad unfeeling men. nell frequently oversteps her bounds in her new job as secretary of a detective firm—breaking shit, dog-napping, snooping and cleaning and forcing her interior design ideas on a man who has no interest in change. suze gets all bent out of shape over View Spoiler », seeming to forget that she secured this relationship View Spoiler » which, ew. margie is a kooky alcoholic who never really seems all there, but will drop bombshells every once in a while. drunk waters run deep and all. her relationship issues are the least of her problems, actually. and yet, considered in the sober light of day, they are the most explosive.
this book operates in a world without consequences (okay, people get murdered, so there are some consequences for some people…) but here, a woman can View Spoiler » with no shyness the next day. and here, a woman can View Spoiler » which, trust me, in the real world, these things have consequences. awkward, long-lasting consequences. you can’t un-see someone’s genitals.
but again, this is frivolous fun, and it would be childish to elevate it and hold it to real-world realities.
it is simply a light genre-blend of mystery and romance which is genuinely funny in places.
and this is the moral i took from this story:
Tobias: You know, Lindsay, as a therapist, I have advised…a number of couples to explore an open relationship where the couple remains emotionally committed but free to explore extramarital encounters.
Lindsay: Well, did it work for those people?
Tobias: No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but…but it might work for us.
where you substitute “open relationship” for “sleeping with the boss.”
NOT AT ALL PAINFUL!
jennifer crusie, who knew???
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