Book Report: One for the Money by Janet Evanovich

It took a Katherine Heigl movie to get me to start reading Janet Evanovich's popular Stephanie Plum series.  I like mysteries, but my taste in them runs more toward the cozy (i.e., small-town incidents resolved by kindly old ladies) than the cold-blooded.  I'd heard that the Plum books fell into the latter camp, a rumor that was confirmed early on in this colorful, streetwise story. 

Stephanie Plum is a recently laid-off lingerie buyer in serious need of some money.  Evanovich pulls no punches in describing what it's like to be unemployed in New Jersey.  Yep, Steph is a Jersey girl, a Trenton girl to be exact, right down to her big hair and turquoise eyeliner (more on that later).  There are no comfy accounts of using the free time to catch up on home improvement projects or house-sit for elderly relatives, just unvarnished reports of stale Fig Newton lunches, repossessed vehicles, and, oh yeah, the hunting down of dangerous criminals who just happen to be high school boyfriends.  That's right.  Stephanie's sought gainful employment as a bounty hunter for her sleazy cousin's bail bond business.   So maybe it is a little contrived, a little charmed.  Just not in the way that I'm used to.

I'm not going to get into the plot.  Because I'm not really a plot kind of girl, and even if I tried it would go something like this: shooting-shooting-double-cross-shooting-shooting-drug bust-double-cross-shooting-surprise ending.  I'll just say that it was suspenseful.  And creepy.  So much so that I'm going to focus on the more normal parts, i.e, the fringes.  Here are the highlights:

"I spent some time on my hair, doing the blow-drying thing, adding some gel and some spray.  When I was done I looked like Cher on a bad day.  Still, Cher on a bad day wasn't all that bad.  I was down to my last pair of spandex shorts.  I tugged on a matching sports bra that doubled as a halter top and slid a big, loose purple T-shirt with a large, droopy neck over my head.  I laced up my hightop Reeboks, crunched down my white socks, and felt pretty cool."  (152)  (I feel the need to interject that our heroine wears an alarming amount of biker shorts.  Naturally, this phenomenon led me to check the copyright of the book.  It's 1994, which kind of checks out.)

"I grabbed the ultracool black and purple Gore-Tex jacket I'd purchased when I was of the privileged working class, and I headed for the parking lot.  This was the sort of day to read comic books under a blanket tent and eat the icing from the middle of Oreos.  . . . I pumped myself up by applying fresh lipstick.  There was no great surge of power, so I deepened the blue liner and added mascara and blush.  I checked myself out in the rearview mirror.  Wonder Woman, eat your heart out." (169-170)

Fashion, with a little food and reading thrown in.  Those are where my loyalties lie.

So, will I be embarking on the car chase that inevitably marks the rest of the Plum misadventures?  Probably not.  Although I liked Stephanie 's character and appreciated Evanovich's darkly witty writing, there's just too much grisliness at play for me to comfortably settle into this series.  I might rent the movie version of One for the Money when it comes out though, if only for comparison's sake.

Book Report: Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy

It's always exciting when one of your favorite authors comes out with a new book.  So, I was delighted when I saw this Maeve Binchy paperback peering out at me at the grocery store.  The title, Minding Frankie, wasn't new to me, as I'd bookmarked the hardback version on Amazon and had had a chance to form some ideas about the story.  I'd envisioned a nostalgic saga set in the 1950s and 1960s about a single mother raising a little boy in an Irish village.  They'd have their struggles, but the laughter would outweigh the tears, and all would be well in the end. 

The real story turned out to be much the same in tone if not detail.  Minding Frankie is set in present-day Dublin and stars a recovering alcoholic, Noel Lynch, whose casual ex-girlfriend tells him that she's dying and pregnant with his daughter.  Noel is a serious but directionless sort, a one-time artist with a dead-end job who, at thirty, still lives with his parents.  (I pictured him as Joseph Gordon-Levitt.)  The story had the potential to be a downer, but because this is a Binchy book, I knew that bright beginnings were on the horizon.  Which is to say that Noel, albeit reluctantly, takes on the baby girl.  And moves into his own apartment.  And enrolls in college.  And acquires a roommate in the form of the warm but flighty Lisa Kelly.  (I pictured her as Katherine Heigl.)  As with all of Binchy's novels, an amusing cast of characters is threaded throughout the plot.  Some are granted happy endings; others require lots of tissues.  But all are interesting and enrich Noel and Frankie's story.

Although I had the ending pegged as predictable, it proved to be more realistic than the tidy stock finale I had in mind.  I appreciated this on an intellectual level but was a little disappointed emotionally.  This fly in the ointment notwithstanding, I enjoyed Minding Frankie.  It was cozy and comforting and kind, all the things I've come to expect from Binchy.

Movie Moment: New Year's Eve

Like Valentine's Day, Garry Marshall's other holiday-themed, star-studded extravaganza, New Year's Eve features eight intersecting vignettes about people searching for hope, and yes, in most cases, love. 

Here's the rundown.  (I'm not going to bother using character names; when a movie has as many celebrities as this one, they become sort of superfluous.)  Josh Duhamel is hoping to meet the "extraordinary" woman he met last New Year's Eve by chance at a pizza place.  Michelle Pfeiffer is a bored office worker who hires bike messenger Zac Efron to make her New Year's resolutions come true.  Jessica Biel and Seth Meyers are competing with Sarah Paulson and Til Schweiger for the $25,000 awarded to the first baby born in the new year.  Hilary Swank is orchestrating the Times Square ball drop and encounters technical difficulties that can be solved by only eccentric electrician Hector Elizondo.  Sarah Jessica Parker is a single mom trying to prevent her teenage daughter, Abigail Breslin, from spending midnight in Times Square with a boy.  Wise guy Ashton Kutcher and perky Lea Michele get stuck in an elevator.  High-profile caterer Katherine Heigl, whose sous chef is Sophia Vergara, has her heart broken by rock star Jon Bon Jovi (who, oddly, does not quite play himself).  Robert De Niro is dying in a hospital, and Halle Berry is his nurse.  All of this drama is sprinkled by wise words from Ludacris, who plays a cop and, ostensibly, Hilary Swank's work husband.

Although the plot (or, rather, plots) moved a little slowly at first, New Year's Eve is ultimately fun and frothy, spiked with the kind of gentle twists that you (okay, I) loved in Valentine's Day.  High points included commentary on Sarah Jessica Parker's shoes, Seth Myers's comic timing, Sofia Vergara's silliness, and an appearance by recent "Project Accessory" contestant Shea Curry.  Oh, and the Christmas decorations backlit by the glitz of Times Square.  As always, the flashier the better.       

Movie Moment: Life as We Know It

Against my better judgment, I rented Life as We Know It. You know, the one with Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel that was out last fall. The bf and I were meant to be seeing Just Go With It, but the movie theater parking lot was full, what with it being the movie's opening weekend and Valentine's Day weekend to boot, so we turned around and went home. I immediately began surfing through On Demand's movie menu, on the lookout for a romantic comedy. Any romantic comedy. Even one about two people who hate each other being forced to raise someone else's baby.

The first scene takes place a few years earlier than the rest of the movie. Straitlaced Holly (Heigl) and bad boy Messer (Duhamel) (Yes, that's his name. His last name. But still.) are set up on a blind date by their mutual best friends. Messer thunders up to Holly's apartment on his motorcycle an hour late, then takes a call to arrange a date with another woman. Outraged, Holly tells him to forget it, and he agrees, saying she can do whatever it is she likes to do on a Saturday night. You could read a book, he suggests, or blog. You look like you blog. (That one wormed a chuckle out of me.) Holly responds by throwing him out of her smart car, and that's that.

At least it is until the two of them become the guardians of one-year-old Sophie after their friends are killed in a car accident. Of course, this turns their lives upside down, pitting their discordant personalities against each other. A cook who owns her own shop, Holly is responsible, efficient, and looking to hook up with a gorgeous doctor who has purchased exactly thirty-seven of her sandwiches. Which is to say that she's the classic Heigl heroine, a together woman looking for a together man who ends up being tossed into the arms of one who's anything but. As a basketball director who's used to women buying him drinks, Messer fits the bill as her dud-in-shining-armor. Watching all of this, I don't like him. Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say I don't want to like him. But witnessing him and Holly struggle with Slumdog Millionaire-smelling diapers (their words), mounting bills, nosy neighbors, and a meddling caseworker, even I can't deny that they're growing inevitably closer. The movie is sneaky this way, manipulating my sympathies to be in favor of the wayward Messer. After all, as plenty of bimbos in the movie demonstrate, women are unable to resist a man pushing a stroller. I don't appreciate such manipulation and try to fight it. But the writers' plot is stronger than my resolve. So, when Holly lands a date with the good doctor (who just happens to be Sophie's pediatrician), I'm a bit torn. But I don't have long to suffer, because she soon ends up in bed with Messer, her relationship with the doctor over before it begins.

The new couple continues on happily, despite the disapproval of their caseworker, who can tell they've slept together just by listening to the give-and-take of their conversation. But then disaster strikes in the form of a boilerplate romantic comedy conflict. Messer accepts a job across the country. He doesn't want to leave Holly and Sophie, but it's his dream, yada, yada, yada. So, Holly reconciles with the doctor. This turn of events makes me wonder what she told him before and just how he came back so willingly (neither is clear). But it hardly matters, as Holly kindly dumps him after a blowout with Messer over Thanksgiving dinner. He takes it well - too well, in my opinion - and slinks off, freeing Holly to embark upon a tried-and-true, stop-him-at-the-airport mission to reclaim Messer. He isn't there. But that's only because he's waiting at home in that twist-on-an-old-cliché that's been pressed into service so often it's become a cliché itself.

Sure, it was cheesy. And I still think the doctor is nicer than Messer. But I accept that this just isn't the kind of story where the that type of guy gets the girl. Ever notice how there are two formulas for the guy getting the girl? As in, 1) nice nerdy guy and cool jerky guy battle for girl and nice guy finally gets her and 2) nice [in this case a euphemism for pompous] polo-shirt-wearing guy who makes lots of money and rough-around-the-edges-but-secretly-sweet guy battle for girl and secretly-sweet finally guy gets her. In this case, I think of the doctor as the nice guy nerd and crusty Messer as the heartbreaking threat (even though the movie's writers see things otherwise). I like to think that this says more about my soft spot for nerds than it does about a hidden gold-digging yen for doctors.

All of that having been said, I yammered on for quite a while about a movie I allegedly didn't enjoy. I guess in my own warped way I liked it after all. :)