I’ve just finished a book that I wasn't even planning to read - and which I only picked up because I wanted a quick and easy read. I truly misjudged the situation, that's all I can say.
So, this particular book turned out to be a miss (and not a near one) that I almost abandoned midway. Somehow, it made me struggle and got me both annoyed and bored. I'm still a tiny bit unsure what was so unsuccessful in it – for me, personally – and as the answer isn’t at all obvious, I decided to write about it. Let’s see where I’ll get with this.
So, the book we’re talking about is a short story collection, titled Bad Girls, by Mary Flanagan. I don’t know almost anything about Flanagan and couldn’t find out a lot either. It seems to me she doesn’t even exist: while there are a few other Mary Flanagans out there, circling about the online world, she might be one of them, all of them, or none of them. Based on all the things I couldn't find out about her.
All stories of Bad Girls contain women ‘misbehaving’ - I presume to show how society, after all, doesn’t accommodate untamed women. I do think that I’m a feminist, but I’m also very tired of this narrative. It might be that we’ve hit the 2020s, and have already seen many untamed women… but this book (my edition was published in 1984) is just not that relevant anymore. These bad girls feel hysterical (characters kidnap children!), try to poison husbands (what’s new?) and are generally quite despicable human beings. A few 'bad girls' might be truly despicable - in real life as well - but all of them…? It's a boring generalisation. Layers. Please.
Unfortunately, I don’t think their personal reasons to be so awful are strong enough. Not as if any reason could be strong enough to kidnap a child, for example, but it would help if I felt empathy towards any of the characters. They felt spoiled, hysterical and extremely egocentric. If Flanagan had gotten the reader to like them and break them down then, well that could’ve had an effect. Because what is better than tormenting your readers between liking and despising your characters - both at the same? Villanelle's character in Killing Eve is a perfect example of this. She's adorable and despisable and that keeps us hooked.
Actually, before writing all this down, I didn’t even realise that this was my biggest problem with the book. Isn’t it great to have this blog-universe to rant?
My second takeaway from this reading experience is that the more words aren’t the better. (Or better said; the more complicated words – aren't the better.) How extremely overwritten this collection is, I cannot even fathom. Its vocabulary is unreasonably complicated (in a snobbish way) and is apparently dying to be stylish. I do adore complicated words, honestly, no one is as off in this sense as I am. I think here, I’m mostly cross with myself and not even Flanagan, because God my taste has been broken, for sure. I think, now, I really need to read a bit of Hemingway (a famous case of minimalism).
Bad Girls is so very puzzling, for it is not completely empty – it does have some sensitivity in it – but isn’t deep enough either to validate such a grand language. It comes across as unreasonably pompous. (Also, I’d quote from the book to prove my point, but I’m not sure I'm allowed to, so I won’t.)
I find it incredible that I’m writing this down, but now, I think I also need to read something traditionally 'tale-telling'. That's not what I usually crave. Not as though Bad Girls were outrageously untraditional, but it wasn't pioneering either. Was it pioneering in the 1980s? I have no idea. It’s not even traumatising, it’s a skilful and solid book. But that's not what it wanted to be. It doesn’t feel honest. It feels sweaty and dying to be original, and – probably due to personal reasons - to me, all this is quite the worst thing a book could be. Trying so hard and missing so hard.
I think my personal takeaway is that You needn't be original. You need to be yourself. And you, yourself, are a human, just as every other human out there so you’ll be fundamentally unoriginal. And that's okay. That’s just right. That’s just enough.
Last but not least, ‘bad girls’ is such a general term, that it doesn’t really mean anything anymore. In their wars too, women – humans – tend to present so many layers and forms. Versions. Bad girls in what sense? Bad girls in whose eyes? If the answer is in every and any sense and in everyone and anyone's eyes, then Flanagan might just as well have not given her book any title at all.
I was thinking about whether I’m the only one having a problem understanding ‘bad girls,’ as a term, and then I had this absolutely unoriginal idea of asking an AI. So, I asked Microsoft Bing to draw pictures based on the term ‘bad girls,’ and what it came up with was harrowing.
This is what happened:
Look. Even AI was confused. Hurtfully over-sexualised, or having zero sense. Because the expression of 'bad girls' is just not specific enough.
So, after this, I tried to include different artistic styles – still without changing anything about the content: ‘bad girls.’
This is what happened:
Renaissance bad girls. Still over-sexualised:
Microsoft Bing, really, c’mon.
Something a tiny bit more interesting went down with impressionism:
The cartoon version I can’t even share here. Lacking all taste, too much skin shown.
The Klimt Girls did the same, although at least in different outfits:
My Conclusion is that bad girls – according to AI – are very sexual and smoke. That’s what bad girls are. They start and end here. And that, my friend, is the problem.
Now, I need to read and watch something very different, because I cannot unsee and unread all this.
Two stars.
Hugs from The Fearless Frock.:)
(Find the book here, if you dare: https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780689115936 )
Comments