Thursday, January 11, 2007

"Posh," a novel by Lucy Jackson

Do you ever read a book where each chapter is from a different character’s point of view and you find yourself only reading the chapters about the 2 characters that interest you?

Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this. I did it with “Posh,” a well-crafted book about an elite high school in Manhattan. There’s a glamorous mother who is self-admittedly “cold.” When her son Michael gets accepted at Harvard, she thinks of hugging him, but she doesn’t move and neither does he and what could have been a special moment becomes nothing.

Julianne has the perfect boyfriend in Michael: he’s handsome, Harvard-bound and…manic-depressive (not so perfect after all). Her friends stop envying her as Michael’s mood swings get ugly. He has breakdowns when he doesn’t take his medicine. He cries and tells her, “You can’t leave me. I need you,” effectively blackmailing her emotions and manipulating her into staying. Even when she sees him as nothing more than a problem, she’d feel guilty if she left him. So she lies to her mom and dutifully supports Michael. Her friends have an intervention to tell her she’s not his wife and doesn’t owe him such loyalty. But her youth also makes her destructive behavior believable, and it’s beautifully written by Lucy Jackson (listed in the back of the book as a pseudonymous for an acclaimed short story writer and novelist).

But I skipped every chapter devoted to the character that rubbed me the wrong way, in this case, the school's headmistress who is cheating on her husband. Please tell me I'm not alone in playing favorites like this.

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posted by - @ 1/11/2007 10:25:00 AM |

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