Goes Somer * Goesomer * Gossamer

Anywho, this started back the other day.

Christmas has come and gone and as per usual, The Forever Girlfriend picked out the gifts for us girls. The only shopping my father ever does is at Menard’s (the Iowan version of Home Depot) and a once-a-year visit to Victoria’s Secret to purchase The Forever Girlfriend underwear (which is sort of a gift to himself, now that I think about it, but I digress, as one does). My point is, she chose the purchases, packed them up and mailed them out. Some gifts were spot on (comfy sweater! pretty earrings! yay!) and the rest were the well intentioned sort of things that didn’t pan out. Like her attempt to mail homemade brownies (looked and tasted as though they’d been through a clothes dryer—the thought totally counts, but it wouldn’t’ve hurt to extend some thought to the packaging of said baked goods before mailing. Not that I’m mad at her for sending the brownies, it’s just, receiving what might have been delicious brownies is like looking down at all your crushed hopes and dreams. Which is why you still try one even though you know you’ll be disappointed. WOE IS ME). Or sending me Bath and Body Works hand wash, even though both the Twin and I have eczema  (I’ve had it worse, since the 9^th grade) and I can never use soap with an alcoholic base for the scent unless I want to break out into a horrific rash. (I know she was thinking ‘Ooo smelly goodness’ but it’s a bit like being sent a box of. . .totally ruined brownies, now that I think of it).

Then there is the inevitable: her well-intentioned yearly venture into a bookstore (drugstore) to purchase a book she hopes (shrugs shoulders) I might like. When Grandma wanted to buy us books but didn’t know what to get, she circumnavigated the trouble of guessing by describing our demographic to a store clerk and getting advice. The result? We got Harry Potter.

Best. Gift. EVAR (save Harold and the Purple Crayon, but I digress).

I’m not sure what The Forever Girlfriend’s thought processes behind book purchases for me are. Last year was a sweet, sweet gift card (YES! WIN ALL AROUND!). But the book of two winters ago was an horrible romance. . .thing. . .that I might have appreciated if I were a suburban housewife divorcé with children and a gaggle of female friends whose sexual freedom I envied, but ultimately was enabled to feel superior to as their ‘indiscretions’ cause them all manner of trouble and then we were all BFFs, THE END! (THE FLIGHT TO JAPAN WAS LONG AND I WAS FEVERISH, OKAY?!)

I could digress. But I won’t. Because I know, I KNOW I got a special book this year. And I would like to share it with you, my Five Readers.

I will attempt to present:

U

U is for Undertow

No, seriously. This is a title. The book is by Sue Grafton. . .whomever she may be (I feel we will soon become a bit more acquainted through her psyche). It’s a #1New York Times bestseller, as the cover says. There are a fair few letters in the English alphabet, U being toward the bottom, so I’ll have to assume this lady’s made a lot of moneys off her series and lots of persons read it, as she’s made it to U and not been canned. I eyed the blurb and this being a detective novel of some repute, I figured I might not love it, but it might be a lark.

It did not start well. I knew Ms. Grafton and I were going to have some ideological conflicts the moment she (or her editor with an assist by the layout crew) chose title and head chapter one as: “Wednesday afternoon, April 6, 1988” (which might have been cool if instead of a diary heading it’d been, like, a case log). When we get to the meat, Sue, er, the detective opens the book with this “intriguing” line:

“What fascinates me about life is that now and then the past rises up and declares itself.”

Which is sort of, meh, because I’m leery of first person and shouldn’t be so prejudiced against a perfectly legitimate narrative perspective, except the second sentence is:

“Afterwards, the sequence of events seems inevitable, but only because cause and effect have been aligned in advance.”

Detectives put together puzzles of who-done-it, so opening with our detective musing about how events only seem inevitable in retrospect goes right along with the Holmesian train, and I went along for the ride until I hit the brick wall of! Fate Invocation!

“I discount the notion of accident. Fate stitches together elements that seem unrelated on the surface. It’s only when the truth emerges you see how the bones are joined”

Ect, blah, blah. Dude, you are a detective. Douglas Adams, revealer of the number 42 and therefore master of all knowledge in this U(u)niverse(s) put forth the fallibility of retrospective perception in the succinct parable of the sentient puddle and you, madam, are a sentient puddle. How the FUCK you deduce ANYTHING in reality beyond clicking your heels together and wishing it to be true when that is your philosophy, I cannot fathom.  

I glossed over this because, well. It’s the sort of thing I never used to notice and most people don’t see the flawed reasoning of and that’s human. We’re good at compartmentalization and I can roll with a character who, to varying degrees, might, because, hey, I’m not this detective and it’s not my opinion that matters here.

Then our detective introduces herself:

“My name is Kinsey Millhone.”

I shit you not. #1, NYT BESTSELLER, allegedly written for an adult audience and it starts exactly the way my autobiography started in the first grade. If you expect this to be followed by I am sven yeers old, prepare for disappointment. It’s followed by:

“I’m a privet detective,”

She’s a grownup and thus, is defined by her occupation, occupation is the answer we were looking for. Besides, this book is about her endeavors in her occupation set to the backdrop of her life so naturally—

“female,”

You know, I did sorta work that out from the book jacket and even if I hadn’t, I’m sure I could’ve worked it out well enough from contextual cues—

                “age twenty-seven,”

GOD DAMNIT!

                “with my thirty-eight birthday coming up in a month”

Regression to grade school essay writing:

COMPLETE

NEW YORK.

TIMES.

BESTSELLER.

The #1

Having read this far, I was reasonably confident in asserting that continuing on could only result in me falling to my knees begging, “WHY CELESTIAL TEAPOT? WHY??!!!1!!!,” and losing faith in humanity’s intellect as I went on to bed that evening knowing Grafton is raking it in while I will wake the next day to my minimum-wage job peddling shit folks don’t need and me, it’s seller, can’t afford. One might say that this would be the prudent point to put aside the book, take a deep breath, pour some Bailey’s on ice, reflect and be thankful that while I might never be Jo Rowling, I at least will never be Sue Grafton. 

I, however, I smelled blood in the water. I did go on to pour Bailey’s before continuing, tho. We shall now proceed as a read-along:

Sue, er, Kisley. . .Kinsley? Kinsley, fine, is a two-time divorcé, now single. . .okay, so I meant to list her listing, but I’m a gonna have to quote this shit:

“I have no children thus far and don’t anticipate bearing any.”

‘Bearing’. Just. Really?! The language goes from, hi, my name is, to, ‘I expect’ and ‘thus far’ and child ‘bearing’. Srsly? Why not just say, ‘I don’t have kids, don’t expect to have any’?

I ask these questions—why do I ask them when I don’t want the answer?

The answer is, the following sentence goes:

“Not only are

*Page turn*

my eggs getting old, but my biological clock wound down a long time ago.”

MY GOD, SRSLY, you are introducing yourself to complete strangers woman! WHY ARE YOU DEFINING YOURSELF BY OVULATION?!!!!! Does anyone do this? ANYONE?

Hi, I’m nepenthe; I work as an XXXX, I’m twenty-seven, single, have no children and my eggs are ripe!

;asdlfj;aofjdao;jisfo;aiwej;nad;fvn;aksehdo;fhiakdfjg;aldfj;alskfj

Respect for Kinsey totals: 0

Respect for Sue: -10

Kinsey lives and works in the city of “Santa Teresa, California”. I lived in California and never heard of such a place—Googled it and guess what? Santa Teresa, CA is the fictionalized version of Santa Barbara originally created by author Ross MacDonald in his crime fiction classic, The Moving Target (1949) and since Wikipedia ALREADY has an annotation that Sue’s character lives in his city. I feel a bit like a preening peacock to have smelled a rat off the mark.

(How do I pronounce Mill-Hone? Mill-own? Mill-own-ie? GOOGLE HAS VERBAL PRONUNCIATION and I have satisfaction: Mill-own wins!)

So. A young man comes by Kinsey’s office—Michael—as one does in a crime novel. He’s the typical Santa Barbara rich, sandal and Abercrombie wearing college grad wearing an untucked dress shirt and loose school-boy tie. From the way Kinsley describes him, “narrow-hips” and such, I wonder if she’s got a school-boy fantasy.

 I don’t mind giving a preppie a bit of hell for attending privet school, but only if a) I knew him well or b) he was a dick about it. Since the dude’s a polite, hand-shaking, yes ma’am sorta gentleman—makes light about how there were three Michaels in his class so he’s used to going by his last name, Sutton—I found him, well, nice so far. So when she asks him which school he went to and he says, “Climp,” Kinsey describes it as a privet school, Climping Academy:

“All students enrolled there refer to it as “Climp,” as though the proper appellation was just, like, sooo beside the point.”

First, Appellation? What is up with this character’s diction? It has the veneer of hard-boiled, without the execution and then Sue—or Kinsley, I haven’t worked out when it’s the character and when it’s the Author voice, but I’m reasonably sure this was an authorial slip—throws in a five-dollar word. Also, her mocking and lumping Michael together with valley bimbos was a slight that took me by surprise. Okay, not total surprise. There are plenty who are put off by Michael’s ilk, but different strokes for different folks and Michael. . .really? The first thing out of the dude’s mouth aside from a greeting was an apologetic, “Do you have time to talk?” and follows up with “I hope this isn’t an inconvenience,” begging off if interrupting. Dude’s respectful of her time and demonstrates no sense of self-importance or condescension as of yet. Which is why Kinsley’s sneering at privet school kids, followed by,

“Watching him, I wondered if my blue-collar roots were as obvious to him as his upper-class status was to me.”  

irritated me. Because as human as it is to seek out signs of social status and for us to sneer at those above or below us, Kinsey sitting there and supposing that because she can’t get over her own bitterness at his being well-off in the Life Lottery, he must be thinking the same of her. Even though all evidence to the contrary supposes he, you know. Thinks she’s a detective. And is polite to her, like she were his mom.

Ah—he gives away hints at family estrangement and because she can identify, she gives him a little slack. Wondering if it’s really because she can identify or because this disassociation from his family allows her to disassociate him from his money.

Kid says he was reading a news article and a memory—one he hadn’t thought about in ages—pops into his head and he realized the men he’d seen digging a hole in the woods out in a ravine by some neighbor’s home were some kidnappers out burying a body. As one does.

Ugh. Contrived dialogue, bane of my existence.

Page 7 has almost no dialogue markers whatsoever.

Ugh. I hate the infantilization of grown persons—okay, so sometimes it’s fun. But Michael was alright at the off, but I feel like Sue is taking a field hockey stick to him and screaming, “GET IN YOUR SPOILT RICH BOX, DAMNIT” as Michaels says, in regard to eating a sandwich made by another child’s mother—as a child in grade school, mind you:

“Mom always said it was rude to complain, so I ate what I could and left the rest on my plate. The kid’s mom hadn’t even cut the crusts off the bread.”

Sue has him state this without any qualification that this was his opinion as a six or seven-year-old kid, implying that he still holds to this opinion, since Kinsley gets in the sneering dig,

                “There’s a shock.”

without his notice of the insult or reproof from him, painting him as dim emasculated kid who won’t eat bread crusts. If I might throw in a personal bit, I’d like to add that my mom always forced me to eat the crusts on my bread and it was but a few years ago when it occurred to me that, hey. I’m an adult. I don’t like crusts on generic bread. I’m gonna go ahead and cut that shit off. And I did. And you know what?

It was delicious, bitches.

Deal with it.

Anyway. I now see Sue intends for us to view Michael in the light of a spoiled brat who never managed to mature beyond 7 and can’t fathom that others didn’t grow up with their own cooks who whipped together homemade mayo rather than having to eat disgusting Miracle Whip from *gasp* a jar.

I hate mayo altogether, therefore cannot comment on the homemade v. Miracle Whip battle. I can say that Sue’s taken this over the top.

*goes back to reading for a bit*

He doesn’t want to go back to Climp! Doesn’t wanna! You can’t make me, smelly lady! “As he talked, I could see him regressing to the boy. . .” Kinsey, Sue’s ALREADY painted him regressed as is—you’ve put him there, there’s nowhere else to go back to. Why do I get the feeling Sue was in the position where she couldn’t have a 7 year old walk into Kinsey’s office to say he thinks he might’ve seen some guys burying a body, so she tossed in this guy as a stand in—you know, for the first couple of pages of his intro, I wasn’t sure if Michael was over 18. It was a bit ambiguous and I was wondering if Kinsey ought to’ve asked after his parents after Climp featured in their conversation. Had to go back and re-read,. I wasn’t certain he was out of school until he mentioned graduating college.

Ooo. Michael mentions he might’ve seen the one of the two guys burying the body, years later. Maybe. He could be mistaken. Possibly. Who does he think it might’ve been? Nevermind. Not important.

JFC.

So. Michael sold advertising for a radio station. Was fired from the job. Is unemployed now. Interesting. He enrolled in Stanford, stayed for a few semesters and dropped out—never got his BA and lied about it on the job application. To this, he says,

“What’s done is done and I just have to move on.”

To which Kinsley thinks,

“I’d heard a host of criminals make the same remark, like boosting cars, robbing banks, and killing folks could be brushed aside, a minor stumble on the path of life.”

Okay, yes. Lying on a job application is morally ambiguous. But you know what? I’m of the opinion that a sheet of paper from a college isn’t necessary to do a job well—if you’re capable of doing your job without having to give up part of your precious one life and spend a ridiculous amt of money on school, the piece of paper is fucking pointless. Good example? Jane-motherfucker-Goodall. Besides, Kinsley’s a bit of a hypocrite. When Michael asked about her history back on pg. 3, Kinsley stated:

“I skipped over the two lackluster semesters at the local junior college and started with my graduation from the police academy.”

Technically, they’re BOTH college drop outs. While I don’t condone Michael lying on a job application—I generally dislike lying—the scenario reads as contrived. Not to mention I’ve found lying in a job interview to be a morally ambiguous proposition. At my current job, I was asked something about—I’m not sure what. Something about if I saw myself in sales as a career and I lied my ass off by saying it was what I wanted. Because I’d told the truth at every other job interview and for some unfathomable reason, no one would hire me. Which is why I’d spent a year unemployed, depressed and loathing myself with a bleak future and you know what? One more month and there would’ve been no way I’d’ve made rent and I still needed to EAT, goddamnit, and if I had to fake enthusiasm for doing a job I’d rather not be doing but would pay my bills which I’d do to the best of my ability regardless of how much I enjoyed doing it, then yes. I lied. I didn’t lie about something they could fact-check (like which school I attended) but you know what? It doesn’t mean I don’t get the job done—hell, I was given a covered parking space one month for my ‘positive attitude’. So lying on a job application to get a job you’re perfectly capable of performing. . .unless the dude ran the station to the ground because he couldn’t do the advertising (which, since he said he was fired for lying on his job application, he might’ve been shit at his job, he might not have, but the reason given is, well, not performance but the lie—maybe the lie is meant to imply he was incompetent? I’m not sure) is a moral grey area. Not something to approve of, but if you need work, you’re fully capable but no one will just give you a fucking chance . . . I get it. And I find it exorbitant to compare lying about ones qualifications on a job application for, of all places, a radio station merits comparison to criminals, to murders. Really? Murders? “Killing folks”? It’s not like he lied on an application to become a brain surgeon, Kinsey.

He offers to pay by check and Kinsey goes:

“A check?”

I can hear her shriek, “A check?” as if he were insulting her intelligence. Which one might assume if he were a mature adult who understands what such a suggestion might imply, but as we’ve established Michael has the maturity level of a six-year-old. Kinsey screeching at a kid about this feels like. . .well it feels like she’s winding up to extort more money out of him than her services are worth. The ploy seems to work—one of the tennant of a con is to make your target think they’ve come up with the idea on their own—and to make up for offending her, he offers not a money order but cash. Once he does, Kinsey first thought is:

“I consider the notion. The prime item on my Thursday To Do list was to make a bank deposit and pay bills.”

Which to me sounds like, “shit, I got bills to pay and this sop is offering cash up front with no stipulations from him on how I’m to keep him abreast of my progress on his case, demanding a receipt and proof that I’m not draining him for every penny he’s worth.” My skeptic sense is tingling.

Onward reading. Kinsley asks about why he’s not in communication with his family or why he so vehemently refuses to go back to the prep school grounds and he flat out refuses to say. Kinsey’s all:

“I love stories of flunking and expulsion. With my history of screwups, those are like fairytales.”

Yes, the copyeditor missed that it’s “screw-up,” –and yes, I realize I’m one to talk about grammar and punctuation errors, but do consider I’m not getting paid to be on alert for and fix them. So. Kinsey’s the kinda peach who likes to revel in the failure of others to lessen the sting of her own inadequacies—yes, I do see the irony, as I don’t have a book finished, let alone published and Sue has a shit ton on those fronts—but that doesn’t let Kinsey off the hook, especially as she says, to his face:

“If that’s how you want to spend your five hundred bucks, I can live with it.”

There’s kind of glee in her as she speaks this—I can see the crock teeth slipping between the lips of her grin.

So ends chapter one.