Book Review: This Lullaby

[osprey_archer]

I started the next member of the Unread Book Club: Sarah Dessen’s This Lullaby. I have long meant to read something by Dessen, but now that I’ve started This Lullaby I think it’s all right that I haven’t, actually, because I can’t remember the last time that I have so yearned for the heroine (Remy) to break the putative romantic hero’s fingers. In the first hundred pages, Dexter:

1. Sits beside Remy so enthusiastically when he introduces himself that he somehow manages to knock her against the wall. How is that even possible?

2. Insists that Remy give him a ride in her car. Remy tells him no but then just sits there when he lets himself in - she’s already in the car, by the way, she could have just driven off and left him, or run him over, or locked the doors, or done any number of things other than passively let him get in.

3. Then he drops food in her car. After she tells him not to bring food in her car in the first place. And I don’t mean he accidentally spills; I mean he gets a French fry out of his bag and purposefully drops it onto her gearshift while lecturing her about the importance of loosening up. This is when I decided that I wanted her to break his fucking fingers.

4. He also shows up randomly wherever Remy is, in a way that is probably meant to be romantic meet-cute but actually makes him seem like a stalker, especially when

5. Remy slaps a creepy guy in a club and Dexter shows up out of nowhere to save her from the bouncer by pretending to be her date. Because I guess “She’s with me” is a better defense than “I’m drunk and this random stranger is trying to drag me out of the club for nefarious purposes, so I slapped him.”

6. I have just gotten to the part where he climbs through Remy’s bedroom window. I hope she will suffocate him with a pillow and the rest of the book will be about how she gets rid of the body, but I can already tell that they’re going to get together and Remy is probably going to go skinny-dipping and track sand into her beloved car to show that she’s no longer “uptight.” For which read “possessed of reasonable boundaries.”

I think I should probably just quit while I’m ahead. Or at least less far behind than I could become if I keep reading this. Unless it actually does end with Remy snapping and running Dexter over with her car when he tries to forcibly cadge a ride with her yet again?

Comments

[missroserose]

Geez. Yeah, that'd be headed for my DNF pile real quick. Probably airborne, from across the room, and hopefully with a nice rebound off the wall first.

So far my record for "most ridiculously sexist book I've actually read" has been The Big Sleep, which (by the objective scale of How Many Pages Ambrosia Could Read Before Wanting To Throw It Across The Room) beat out Stranger in a Strange Land, the previous champion, by a factor of three. o.O I'm sure there are worse offenders out there, but I'm sure as heck not actively seeking them out.

[osprey_archer]

I wouldn't call it sexist, exactly, outside of this one relationship; it's more like the author has this one vast blind spot for how relationship dynamics should work, but otherwise she writes female characters okay.

Or maybe she's writing her own romantic idfest and it's just that her id in this respect does not match up with mine at all. Maybe she has a kink for creepy boundary-pushing.

[missroserose]

I guess I tend to view the whole "it's the woman's job to put up barriers and the man's job to push past them" attitude as sexist, since it fits so nicely with the institutionalized patriarchal "it's the woman's job to stay pure and protect her chastity and the man's job to conquer her, either by flowers or force" attitude. Still, it's good to know she can write decent female characters.

I think you might be on to something with that last. It's not an uncommon kink, especially among women who're otherwise very against the whole framework; something about the eroticization of fear, I think. But I personally still have a hard time when it's presented as normal behavior, without explicit consent and negotiation beforehand.

[evelyn_b]

And I don’t mean he accidentally spills; I mean he gets a French fry out of his bag and purposefully drops it onto her gearshift while lecturing her about the importance of loosening up.

OH NO

That's not a good way to get someone to loosen up!

I have just gotten to the part where he climbs through Remy’s bedroom window.

OH NO

I like a lot of rom-com bullshit if the author can pull it off, but I have to draw the line at breaking and entering and pedagogically motivated french-fry dropping.

[osprey_archer]

pedagogically motivated french-fry dropping

Just pausing to savor that phrase for a minute.

Seriously though, it's gotten to the point where anytime a guy in a book says any version of "You need to loosen up," allllll my hackles rise. NO SHE DOESN'T. SHE NEEDS TO GET AWAY FROM YOU, MR. JUDGYPANTS, THAT'S WHAT SHE NEEDS.