Pages: too many..I mean 320
Alright, it's taken me a few days to come to terms with my feelings about this "memoir."
If you want to read this book and even try to enjoy it, pretend that it is fiction, and then it is bearable. Maybe bearable is too nice a word.
Here are the things that I don't understand: almost everyone on amazon and goodreads loved this book. What the hell is wrong with women? Are they trying to live vicariously through a delusional anglophile because they want to live "in a fantasy world?" Yes, most girls do want to grow up and find out that they are secretly princesses, as evidenced by the success of books like The Princess Diary series. However, I feel that there is nothing wrong with growing up and doing something that is in the "real world." Fine says that "Sometimes I think the 'real world' is just a phrase invented by adults to give credibility to the miserable lives they've created for themselves. Feel free to call me delusional, but I was someone on this planet who, no matter how silly it seemed, was actually listening to my heart" (6) but personally, I'm glad that I grew up and live in the real world, rather than a fantasy that leads one to cry outside of Buckingham Palace (because it's just so familiar), or believe a psychic who tells you that you were once a member of the Court of Henry VIII. I'd much rather be a teacher, even if it is less glamorous. I'd much rather live in misery in the real world, than spend my time in a fantasy world that doesn't help anyone else and only seems to make her miserable.
She doesn't understand why all these British men would make out with her drunk ass but then not call her again. Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition Jerramy "feel sorry for me" Fine is crazy as a peach orchard boar (1). I just don't understand why you would write such drivel, when you have the opportunity to write a novel, and you have such interesting characters to draw from as that hippie family, that back country town, going to the psychic, being in London, but it all seems disingenuous and fake.
That is not to say that the book was without any redeeming qualities, or that the narrator was a horrible person bent on ruining everything for everyone. Her descriptions of London, specifically as it relates to meeting British people, I find totally accurate, as they reflect my experiences in London. The only people whose acquaintance I made while there were the teachers that I worked with, and a couple of Canadians who were introduced to me by a friend from TCU. I can understand her wonder at being in London, because I remember wandering by myself for hours through the streets falling over myself trying to see everything there was to see. I can still remember vividly the first time that I saw Big Ben and the realization hit me: I was in London.
It was her social commentary that I found to be lacking in insight and deep thought. She says:
While the English are able to determine one another's class within seconds of hearing another's voice, the U.S. has no equivalent to this. Think about it. Your accent--be it from the Bronx, Texas, Wisconsin, or a tiny mountain town in Colorado--doesn't come with any kind of class label and you're not instantly judges or pigeonholed by the sound of it.
I don't know what kind of crack this woman must have been smoking to think that this is true. Maybe because I'm from Texas, but I feel constantly judged by my accent, and I don't even have much of one, aside from the occasional "y'all" or more embarassing "fixing to." People in the South are often labeled ignorant by others because of their way of speaking.
There were a few moments of clarity and insight when you almost think that she has redeemed herself, where she almost realizes that maybe being royalty isn't everything; that English people are just people, rather than god's gift to the world, but when these realizations are uncomfortable or require a change in behavior she shoves the thoughts aside to continue stalking royalty and crying at buildings. That time that she spent in India, being confronted by the things her parents had always talked about, she could have made a difference there, really showed her royal carriage and distinction she's always talking about, but instead of stopping the car and learning something about suffering, she stays drunk for an entire week and parties every day. I guess she is just like a real princess!
The thing that annoys me the most? At the end of the book she grows as a person, really learns a lesson, and then went out and WROTE THE BOOK ANYWAY.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
(1) "Crazy as a peach orchard boar” (also “madder than a peach orchard boar") is a Southern expression used in Texas and elsewhere. Its exact origin and meaning remains unknown, but a peach orchard boar (or peach orchard pig) allegedly shows wild and unrestrained behavior. The term “peach orchard boar” also means sexual excess. (Appropriate, eh?)
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