The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
My rating: 3/5 cats
mary lou retton two times!!
this is the teen fiction the good girls read. girls without problems like anorexia or cutting or promiscuity or retrograde amnesia. the ones whose mothers don’t need to worry about them rotting their brains on vampires and rainbow parties. the ones janis ian envied:
high school girls with clear skinned smiles who married young and then retired
i mean, it is published by disney, so i wasn’t expecting smut and guts, but it’s pretty precious and twee, qualities which usually give me the angers.
reading the prologue, i thought i was going to hate it—all those cutesy perky wordplays—eventually you learn there is a reason for it, but that doesn’t make it any less irritating.it is like the kid sister of special topics in calamity physics, a book i rather enjoyed, but i can totally understand other people’s hatred of.
at the end of the day, it is a cutesy adventure story for spunky girls. like…like…mary lou retton!
there are a number of positive things about this book; smart girl with energy and a mischievous mind who tries to overthrow an all-male secret society (who hasn’t been there, right??) but for all her grrl power, she ain’t no feminist. even when attempting flirtation with her older boy love interest, she mentally tests and rejects a number of responses, rating them on the basis of “how he will respond and what it will say about me as a person.” what happened to just being yourself, and not a weirdly manipulative and calculating freak? where is sassy magazine c. 1991 for this chick??
and at the end THIS IS WHERE I AM TALKING A LITTLE ABOUT THE ENDING OF THE BOOK, DIG?? when she fails to win the respect of the boys she has been following around and on the one hand being a secret leader to, but on the other hand, really just trying to impress them so they will accept her regardless of her gender, she gets a little shrieky and petulant which just makes her come across as a victim, which is way unattractive. plus, the club she wants to get into is super-lame. a real girl-power book would have her start her own secret society with the couple of girls who are worth anything in this book and like band together in a prank-off (i mean, isn’t this practically a disney template?? stop slacking, mickey…) and then it would all end in a spectacular floor routine in a leotard the color of victory.
it’s not painful to read or anything, but i have a feeling elizabeth would fulking HATE it…
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