Review: Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys, by Eric Garcia

Cassandra French is your typical twenty-something lawyer working in Los Angeles. She spends time with her friends, has a crazy mother (hers is on house arrest), a budding romance with a club owner, and hasn't been to the gym in weeks.

Except, she has one dirty little secret.

Tired of dating the same Neanderthals over and over again, Cassandra decides to do something about it. One afternoon, in a flash of inspiration, she kidnaps a 260-pound electrician who comes on to her at a baseball game, hoping to shape him into a man who will function properly in society. Thus, her Finishing School is born. Thngs come to a climax when she kidnaps Academy Award-winning actor Jason Kelley. Once you get past the fact that this book is supposed to be satire, its actually pretty funny and enjoyable. Although Cassie's friend Lexi is completely annoying, and Cassie's behavior bizarre, to say the least, our narrator has a lot of funny lines.

Comments

Terri B. said…

My husband has been trying to get me to read this book! He has several Eric Garcia books laying around the house and seems to like them. Maybe I'll go dig this one out of the pile.

June 10, 2008 at 2:52 PM

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars...

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m...

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