Tuesday, Mar 10, 2009

Book Review: This One is Mine

Author:       Maria Semple

Publisher:    Little Brown/Hachette

Website:     www.mariasemple.com

ISBN #:      978-0-316-03116-5

Type:         Fiction

Pages:       289 (Hardback)

Purchase:   $16.49 Amazon.Com(HERE)

The Story

Violet Parry is not Anna Karenina. Witty, affectionate, and fearsomely resourceful when she wants to be, she’s a modern woman who has traded a great job for a picture-perfect Los Angeles life with her rock-and-roll-manager husband, David, and their darling daughter. She can speak French, quote Sondheim and whip up dinner from the vegetables in her garden. She has everything under control—except her own happiness. Driving the hills of Los Angeles, her sense of isolation grows with every curve. She has a chance encounter with Teddy Reyes, a roguish small-time bass player with a highly-evolved sexuality. He shows an interest. That’s all it takes. Heedless of consequences, Violet embarks upon her monomaniacal journey towards destruction.

David’s sister Sally, in great shape but pushing forty, is on a mission of her own to attain exactly that status and security which Violet is so quick to abandon. Nothing can stop her—as is discovered by the unfortunate bystanders in her path, and by Jeremy, the sportswriter-savant she’s desperate to marry before he achieves the television celebrity she knows is his destiny.

Consumed with recklessness, Violet and Sally overlook the possibility that David and Jeremy may deal some surprises of their own.

(Excerpt is from www.MariaSemple.com)

The Review

Of late, many of the books I’ve read have been taking me considerable time to get through. Personally, I thought that perhaps it had something to do with me and my reading schedule. What This One is Mine showed me is that it wasn’t me that was slowing the reading process, rather it was the books that I’ve been choosing. All it takes it just that one book that grabs me, and I’m off! This book certainly did that. I started the read late Saturday afternoon and finished it within 24-hours. My reading schedule was unchanged, yet my fervor wasn’t. This book grabbed my attention and refused to let me go until I knew what would happen to Violet and David as well as Sally, David’s sister. Although I’m nothing like any of these characters, I totally “got” them and their fears, motivations, and passions became very real to me.

This book is set in Los Angeles, one that I’ve witnessed and understand. It is an American sub-culture all of its own. The money and fame housed there is immense, as is the poverty and the struggling. The reader of this fine work gets a taste of both. Violet, our heroine, has lost herself in her marriage and in her own mind. She has come to feel devalued in her relationship with David and worthless as a mother. She seems to wander aimlessly through her own life until one day she meets Teddy, a Hep-C infected, recovering drug addict and alcoholic (I’d toss in there a sex-addict, for good measure). Teddy is a struggling musician and, what many would consider, a lost cause. Like the rest that Violet wants to fix, she “fixes” Teddy. She does this first by getting his car repaired to the tune of over $1,000 and giving both him and his bass a ride home. For all that he is and isn’t to her, she can’t seem to stop obsessing about him. This is the beginning of her downfall and the demise of her marriage. It doesn’t take long for David, an extremely bright and well-meaning man, to discover her infidelity. On a yoga retreat, in a heat-induced mud hut sweat, he realizes the type of ass that he’s been to Violet and promises to love his wife and daughter with a full heart. While David is arriving at this realization, Violet is having crude sex with Teddy, and enjoying it at that!

All the meanwhile, the reader is entangled into the storyline of David’s sister, Sally. My distaste for her softens and transforms over the course of the book. She is desperate, lonely, and misunderstood, all the perfect ingredients for a flawed character for a reader to remember. Sally forces her life into one that she thinks she both wants and deserves… a husband and a more stable life. But her pushing her boyfriend, Jeremy, only results in their mutual unhappiness with one another. Sally’s brother, David, is as good as it gets for loving her, but she needs something more… a mark on the world that’s her own. As famous and wealthy as her brother is, she has walked in his shadow and craves her own. Little does she know that it is partially because of her that he was so success-driven in the first place.

This book is written in a brutally honest, yet beautiful manner. Semple was a writer for such shows as Mad About You and Arrested Development. She left her life in L.A. and moved to Seattle and wrote this brilliant debut novel. Besides the actual book itself, I am more than impressed with the author recommendations/reviews on the back cover. She obtains kudos from Tom Perrota (Election and Little Children), Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones’s Diary), and Darren Star (Creator of Sex and The City). I love all of their work and agree with them all on their printed praise.

A special thanks to Heather at Estella’s Revenge.  First, her review of this book is really one to check out!  She has a different spin on the book altogether.  Second, she hosted a Hachette Books giveaway of this book and I was fortunate enough to win a copy!   Again, my thanks to Heather and Hachette Book Group.

Cool Flicks
Here is a video from Maria Semple’s site that I thought you’d enjoy:


 

On Sher’s “Out of Ten Scale:”

The best word to describe this book is “FRESH” and boy is it as spell-binding as it is provocative. I LOVED IT! This book is not all roses and ponies, but true love, compassion, and courage win over depression, despair and loneliness. “Bravo” to Maria Semple (BTW: LOVED LOVED LOVED Mad About You) on this amazing book. There’s not a doubt in my mind that this will be put on film and I’m curious as to how they will cast Teddy! For the genre Fiction, I give this read a 10 out of 10! Maria, if you read this… PLEASE write another!

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