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| Extended exposure to this cover has lessened its' appeal dramatically. Cool concept, but.... |
From Goodreads:
What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program--or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan--or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show up?
Welcome to the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Your tour guide? None other than Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never see beauty the same way again.
The plot wasn't one that Libba bray came up with on her own. As she freely admits, David Levithan pitched it to her and she latched onto it like a leech to a medieval invalid. Okay, bad gross analogy, but not so wrong that I'm going to delete it. I'm not sure how much impact it has on the quality of an authors' work to be given an idea rather than creating it themselves. But when I compare this with her own original works, well....
Full disclosure: I feel weird writing this review, because Libba Bray has long been one of my favorite authors. I feel REALLY weird admitting that after getting about halfway through, I had no desire to finish it. I feel the MOST weird because I've met her a couple of times and she is one of the nicest, coolest people ever and deserves as much admiration as can be provided. But I can't deny that this is, without a doubt, my least favorite of Libba Bray's books. Let it never be said that I am not honest, even in the face of my idols.
My Issues:
There were a couple of problems with Beauty Queens, the first of which starting with the concept itself. It's funny. It's absurd. These are things Libba Bray is good at, as evidenced by Going Bovine. But it lacked the morbid and sobering heart of GB; the main character was dying and there was no cure. This isn't to say that Beauty Queens isn't morbid - it's a story about pageant contestants trapped on an island after their plane crashed and killed everyone else - , but that fact gets lost in the character drama. And oh, there is SO much character drama. Which brings me to my next point.
There is too much going on. The cast of characters is extensive and pretty much everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame on the page wherein we see the situation through their eyes. It's too much. We lose track of who's who, and what are they doing, and why are they doing it. Nevermind that interspersed with the character evolutions and heroes journeys and all that, we are nigh bombarded with satire and soapboxy criticisms of consumer culture and gender stereotypes, the presentation of which was funny the first couple times and then got heavy handed and tedious. And we never really get involved in these characters. Halfway through the book, I still hadn't connected with any of the girls. This disconnect was not helped by the fact that it was written in third person narrative.
Third person narration should never, ever detract from a story. But given how Bray writes in first person, I couldn't help but observe that the grace and eloquence she exhibits in her previous novels is lacking in Beauty Queens. This is not to say that the writing is bad, but given the quality I'm used to from her, I can't help but feel she did herself a bit of a disservice writing in third and from so many perspectives.
Final Thoughts:
Beauty Queens is a good book (at least from what I read) and I did enjoy parts of what I read. It's very much like a zany adventure movie. People like zany adventure movies. I like zany adventure movies. But I read so that I can really and truly get inside the characters of a zany adventure movie, and on that score, I felt let down.
Most likely I will pick up Beauty Queens again at a later date. I wonder if the taste phenomena had an effect on my perception of the novel. You know what I'm talking about: you order hot tea and the server brings out cola. Sure, you love cola, but you wanted and were expecting hot tea. You spit it out. There's probably more than a little bit of this going on with me. However, I doubt that my problems with her attempt at third person narration is going to go away. I love third person. Love it like truffles. Love it like brie and baguettes. And this, this was mild cheddar and Wheat Thins.
Libba Bray writes a good book no matter what. This is just a case of whether if would be a good book for me.
My Rating: 3/5 Mushrooms
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