NVDT – (Sorta) Book Review and Random Thoughts

“The only people who teach at these places are freaks and geeks. And when you’ve got a headmistress who looks like that”—she pointed to my mom in all her hotness, who stood talking to the McHenrys thirty feet away—“it’s easy to see what Mr. Eyecandy was hired for.”

“What?” I asked, not understanding.

“You’re the Gallagher Girl,” she mocked again. “If you can’t figure that out, then who am I to tell you.”

I thought about my mother—my beautiful mother, who had recently been winked at by my sexy CoveOps teacher, and I thought I would never eat again.*

I don’t do book reports, or plot synopsis. These days it seems I read hoping to be entertained, but invariably I end up learning something I could probably have lived without, but I count that as a positive even if it only reinforces the obvious, like blowing out a breath three times a page. None of that here.

In case anyone wants to skip the rest, here’s the quickie. This is a how-to textbook for broad spectrum YA readership. Just sayin’.

I’d wanted to read this book since I saw it on a library display table years ago. I picked it up, read the blurb on the back, got called away without committing the title to memory. A while later I saw another one along the same line (imagine that) but it had a sorta boyfriend taking beginner guitar lessons. I knew that because I read the first couple of pages. Try as I might, I couldn’t locate either via searches or librarians. I have forgotten where now, because I have acquired too many books lately, but I know it was not in the $10 Bag O Books, but I saw the title, grabbed the book, rushed to give whoever (maybe even a garage sale person) my money. Well, actually I sauntered like the cool old guy I am, played it cool at transaction and all the way to the car.

I was not disappointed. And here are the whys – which I had to bullet to stay on track

• Not a word out of place. Nothing I read was close to awkward except the perfectly awkward tone of an awkward scene.
• The protagonist’s voice is never off. Something difficult in a first-person narrative of any sort, much less one with emotional depth, “written” by a female teen, much much less a female teen age spy in training living in an all-girls school for, that’s right, “exceptional young women.” Read that as young geniuses in spy training.
• The lead, Cammie (Cameron Ann when her mother’s mad) Morgan, is perfectly Cammie Morgan. Oh. My. Gosh. Totally. And there’s another thing. This book is adventurous, clever, awkwardly flirtatious, full of potentially lethal action, interaction and humorous teenage situations. Written so well the reader is there. Right there. All the time.
• Every emotion in the book is tangible. Fear, confusion, jealousy, heartbreak, cunning, secrecy, loneliness, curiosity, the new girl, good food, bad food, rappelling, fighting for training or their lives, boy-ology, wardrobe failure (one of my favorites) how to be a “normal” girl, pick a lock, hack a website, bug a room, hotwire a car, take driver’s ed. Many of those in pursuing stalking a “normal” boy with spy skills to find out the burning question in every early teen’s life “does he/she like me?” All as real as being there.
• It’s all of that stuff, and clean enough to pass Walmart and Disney censors. Disney never shies away from action, but you’ll also never hear a Disney Princess or the tag-along Prince (or Thief or Guide or…) say “Well, Fuck” when the opportunity for a surreptitious OMG kiss gets blown.

But Macey only wrenched her arm out of Bex’s grasp and said, “Don’t touch me, b——.” (Yeah, that’s right, she called Bex the B word.)

Now see, here’s where the whole private-school thing puts a girl at a disadvantage. MTV will lead us to believe that the B word has become a term of endearment or slang among equals, but I still mainly think of it as the insult of choice for the inarticulate. So, either Macey hated us or respected us, but I looked at Bex and knew that she was betting on the former.*

***

I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some issues with the series after this book, but they are not with Cammie, or the author who keeps her crew true while fulfilling the demands of the publisher and no doubt Disney who optioned this book right after release. What follows is a discussion of the slippery slope of writing a series to task for a mainstream publisher.

What I gathered from interviews with the author and some asides to those interviews, in the beginning I’d Tell You was a standalone novel. That becomes obvious as soon as book 2 because a few things that were set up in I’d Tell You had to get pocketed, shelved, resolved or realigned to make a series work. The tenor of Cammie and her roomies couldn’t change, just a few major peripherals. Cammie is, after all, a teenage girl, in a book about girls, who are girls regardless of being “exceptional” and the rare boys are…Well, confusing. Even to geniuses who know how to kill a man with uncooked spaghetti, speak 14 languages and do PhD level chemistry. Which are all the plates the author has to keep spinning while “younger-izing” an emotionally charged action-based roller coaster adult spy thriller. While never losing the protagonist’s and her very distinct and personable friends’ voices to produce a series.

Extra Stuff

I went back through after reading for fun and amazement and discovered a secret. Straight, plain language. A lump in the throat, a drizzly rain, a dust encrusted passageway, sharing secrets with the emotion/sensation right there, called what they are. Uncomfortable. Confusing. Embarrassing. Dirty. Even in tags – (Person) said, plus action tag. Often simple, occasionally endearing, always precise, and never too much.

I think writers, even unconsciously, think about being clever here and there. Or we’re bored, let’s get on with it. Or it isn’t working, let’s force something. As far as I could tell, there is none of that in these books other than after book three the whole “what the publisher wants” continuity kicked in, just like all the shit Rowling came up with for the Potter crew to get into and come up against. In fact, the thread in Gallagher Girls beyond Book 1 is tied to the old “who killed my father/mother” conspiracy trope and the secret society of corrupt whozits who are out to stop discovery of the truth. A trope which I confess to disliking more than a proctology exam. Does the author pull it off? Yes. Over the last three books with some of the tried-and-true Bond-esque protagonist MIA, memory drugs etc? Yes. Is the voice and control and in-scene writing there? Yes.

So, if you get off into this series, you’ve been warned. However, I got hooked on I’d Tell You because it’s addictive in that, like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn “Oh damn, what are they doing now?” way. Particularly good for someone who writes female protagonists. And it was, again, as flawless as a book like this can be. Even if it’s not your cup of (beverage) but you’d like to read, or write a mainstream, mass-market, broad-spectrum YA with depth, here’s your textbook. And unless you’re dead or don’t care you’ll find yourself cheering for them not to get busted, hanging your head when they do, laughing at their discomfort (‘cause we were all awkward teenagers once), disliking their antagonists, wondering with them about their world and their teachers…

*excerpt from I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You

A Beautiful Corpse – 16

Huntley slow rolled through the trash lining the curb, stopped in front of a large, shirtless black man, a military surplus jacket in his lap, head lolled back, apparently passed out in a once plush armchair that listed to one side. Charlie the Chair Man of Fifth Street. A king on his throne, his kingdom a garbage strewn block of fading yellow roll down store front security doors between the Enny Tyme 24/7 bodega on the corner behind us and Kitten’s Pink Blossom Lounge on the corner in front. I stepped out to the sidewalk. Huntley reached across, locked the door, got out and locked his side.

“Are you sure about this?” Huntley kicked a beer can and a sole-less boot away from in front of his tire, stepped up on the sidewalk.

“Remember what I told you.” I scanned the entire block, amused by Huntley’s response to a thin, barefoot man dancing down the sidewalk in grimy white basketball shorts and light blue IBM sweatshirt cut into a crop top, his arms out, dipping them side to side like a grizzled child playing airplane. He danced nearer, tiptoed an arm flapping circle around Huntley, threw his head back, honked like a goose and continued his airplane pirouette down the sidewalk.

“Man…” Huntley recovered from the complete three-sixty turn he’d made keeping an eye on gray-beard the ballerina. “That’s him?” He pointed to the seemingly comatose Chair Man. I nodded. “Sir? I…” another glance my way, another nod. “Sir, could you, or would you be willing to, uh, watch my car for me? For a few minutes? I have money, I’ll be, uh, glad to pay you.”

“Gawdam good thing ‘cause ain’t nothin’ free,” rumbled unmoving Chair Man. “Where, an how long?”

“Kitten’s. On the corner there. And, uh, not long. I don’t think.”

“ ‘Course you doan think. Your ass be elsewhere you did.”

“You hear that?” Three teenagers, a girl and two boys, emerged from a walk-up doorway. All dressed in matching, expensive basketball gear. The girl turned, walked backward saying, “The pretty spic is worried about his Momma’s car.” Her two man posse laughed.

“Twenny dollars” Chair Man said, lifting the jacket in his lap revealing a cowboy style revolver with bone grips.

“Uh…”

“Twenny. Or I can’t hep it the middle one cuts your tires.”

“Or I cut me a pretty spic,” the laughter darker. He took a step toward Huntley’s Buick, Huntley waited until knife boy bent in before he pulled the .410 shotgun revolver from under his chauffeur’s jacket, stuck it under knife boy’s chin, raised him up, looked him in the eye and took the knife away. Chair Man put his hand on the cowboy gun.

“That’s enough.” I went from invisible to the center of attention.

“Mo guests? I know me a voice I hear one,” Chair Man, his head finally coming up. “Meyers?”

“New racket, Charlie?”

“My niece an her frenz heppin’ me some with non-believers.”

“Twenty bucks?”

“Inflation.”

“Bullshit,” I had to laugh. “I say five.” I walked up, set a paper bag on Charlie’s lap. “And that’s too much.”

Charlie stuck a big, clean hand in the bag, pulled out a Colt 45 Tall Boy, set it on the sidewalk by his chair. “Still cold’s a good sign. Lemme see…” He turned the bag over and two large Little Debbie’s brownies fell out. “Little Debbie’s? You done gone all white on me?”

“I’m told there’s never been any Famous Amos brownies. That they’re a myth started by a crazy old black man on Fifth Street.”

“See,” to the niece and her posse, “I am famous.”

“But,” niece, pulling knife boy away from Huntley, “you ain’t Famous Amos, old man. And you liked to got D’Arvon’s head blown off.”

“Meyers saved your momma’s life a time ago. You be livin’ with me he hadn’t. Go on, I got this.”

They watched the trio of teens swagger past the bodega and turn the corner.

“I’ll take your fi’ dollars now.”

“Be worth more if we talk first. Word is someone in Kitten’s is pimping rental trouble.”

“You call what goes in an outta there that ain’t regulars trouble, I’d say might be.”

“Bigger man and a skinny one, both wearing Goodwill polyester?”

“Doan go talkin’ no shit ‘bout Goodwill an polyester,” pulling on his chin. “For another dollar, I’d say I seen them two.”

“Recent?”

“If early this mornin’ will do.”

“How about Sumo wrestler material and an Asian handler?”

“Fuck, Meyers, Asians be stayin’ a couple blocks north, you know that. Now if you doan mind, I got a beer gettin’ warm and brownies to tend to.”

“One more. You watched any butterscotch Impalas lately?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Ain’t lyin’. Now a rude woman did come up yesterday evenin’. Charlie an her crew did their thing an be damned the woman doan laugh an say they wanna see the sun set they best leave her car the fuck alone.”

“Young, blonde, toward the top end of the looks scale?”

“Thirties, maybe forties wearin’ pants. Too much sun an kinda hard. New Cadillac, though, bein’ most the same color you asked about the Chev-ro-lay.” He popped the top on the Tall Boy. “You ‘bout done?”

“Close enough.” I held out a twenty. “Tell your niece and her crew to find something else to do. I could’ve been an asshole and let my friend blow one of their heads off.”

“Mighta wised t’other two up some you had.”

***

“Ready?” I pulled open the door to Kitten’s Pink Blossom.

“The poster at the end of the bar.”

“Good man.” I ushered Huntley in, left him by the door. “Kitten,” to a thin woman with an elongated tubular trunk, her presentation a praying mantis in a lavender pants suit topped with a cotton ball.

“Meyers!” followed by a cackle. “Tell me it’s not business ’cause I don’t need none a your shit.”

“Need to speak to your bartender about a pair of rent-a-goons.”

“I am not,” her demeanor shifting to ice, “in the ‘rent-a goon’ business.”

“Man with a gun to his head said you were. So somebody’s lyin’.”

A burly, covered in tattoos no-neck man in a wife beater undershirt banged a glass down on the bar. “You callin’ the lady a liar?”

“Not if she’s clueless about your sideline. But I doubt she is.”

“Time for you to leave.” He reached over the bar, grabbed me by the jacket.

“Time for you to talk,” I grabbed No Neck’s undershirt, pulled. It ripped. Shit. No Neck grunted, I cuffed his ears, hard, grabbed the back of his head with both hands, smashed his face into the bar. Kitten reached behind the counter, Huntley blew a hole in the Pink Panther poster on the wall beside her.

“Hope nobody was in your shitter.” I bounced No Neck’s head on the bar a few times like I was trying to loosen up a bag of ice. “Forget the sawed off, Kitten. The kid’s is a revolver.” I bounced No Neck’s head again, left it down. “You ready?”

“Ya bro ma fuhin’ no,” No Neck, dazed.

“You’re breaking my heart,” I flipped a Miller Lite coaster to blank side up, slid it next to his bloody nose. “Write it down.”

“I con see…”

I pulled the bar towel away from the beer glass he’d slammed down, draped it over his head. “Stand up. Wipe. Write.”

No Neck leaned back, held the towel to his nose, picked a pen from several on the cash register, pulled a note from under the cash drawer, scribbled on the coaster.

“No name?” I took the coaster and the note.

“Some woman,” No Neck tilted his head back. “Slipped me a solo Ben, said find her some talent, have them call that number. She’d take it from there.”

“Use the hundred to buy Kitten a new poster. Right now, I need you to call the woman. Tell her your boys said she can pick up her car behind Tommy’s Deli.”

“Yeah, right,” No Neck shoved the bloody bar towel into the ice bin. I leaned over the bar, sent his head into the bin with it..

“Now.”

***

“You blow somethin’ up in there?” Charlie cradled the Tall Boy in his lap, popped the end of a brownie in his mouth.

“Pink Panther poster.”

“The door to the gawdam bathroom?” chasing the brownie with malt liquor. “A-rabs won’t let me piss at the bodega. How’m I ‘sposed to relieve myself in private now?”

“Sorry, Charlie.”

“Not too strong on originality,” Charlie held up the Tall Boy. “But your money’s good. You’re always welcome on Fifth Street, Meyers,” he nodded, wiped his mouth. “You an the pretty spic come back any time.”

***

Huntley unlocked his door, checked me over the top of the car. “Didn’t he call his niece Charlie?”

“He did.”

“But his name’s Charlie.”

“Yeah, and his mother named both of his sisters Charlie.”

“That’s nuts, man.”

“I think mother had some substance abuse issues and confused easily,” I pulled open the passenger door. “She hollered ‘Charlie’ and got ‘em all. Sounds sane to me.”

“Whatever works, I guess. My mother was a news junkie, named me after a newscaster.”

“I wondered about that. Don’t tell me you have a brother named Brinkley.”

“That was the dog,” Huntley grinned. “My brother’s Walter.”