Thurston Hunger's Reviews > Spending: A Utopian Divertimento

** spoiler alert ** Currently reading this for book club and, um, concerned. This whole Fairy Godfucker introduction, with Ayn Rand assertiveness....hmmmm. I hope I'm being set up for something else...

Well that was after the first 50 pages or so...but then I continued through the book on behalf of my book club and encountered the actual Fairy Godmother and that did not redeem this book for me.

But then I'm not the target audience for this book. I've since returned my copy to the library, but the narrator has an early aside where she addresses the readers, and clarifies that "we" are women. I had the quote to share with my fellow clubbers. Still I of course would welcome a window into the secret lives of women, and cannot help but applaud when a woman near my age values sex at least on par with a good meal.

And yet this book just fails for me.

The interaction with the religious protesters could have been a source of genuine and interesting conflict, instead it turns into a catty high school reunion. The relationships with the narrator's twin daughters also left me wanting more, perhaps the author meant to carve out a character so devoted to her art, that her children are seen as canvases that she cannot control/paint. But nah, it's not even that interesting.
The narrator cannot decide if she is neglectful, or a good parent, or somehow both.

And the love interest, that's what hurts most of all. Not the fact that muse and patron are sort of blurred, but that a woman in her 50's still thinks a prince charming can ride in golden chariot and offer dollars and devotion without asking for anything in return. Oh and since this is a spoiler review, must he lose everything so that then it is he that needs to be rescued? Is that the feminist angle?

I wonder if making this a first person account, with said first person being an artist (and one perhaps best left avoiding self-reflection in my opinion) is what doomed this tome.

Oh well, it generated a decent enough book club discussion but I cannot recommend it myself. Some ideas did spark creativity, particularly the "Christ Hath Come" series of paintings.