False Expectations

[rachelmanija]

While browsing my shelves for reading material to take to Santa Barbara (where I am now), I spotted Emma Donoghue's Slammerkin, which, for reasons of my complex OCD approach to shelving that's too long to explain, was sort of near Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet.

"Ah, yes!" I thought. "Tipping the Velvet. The picaresque adventures of a Victorian lesbian oystergirl turned actress turned rentgirl (etc). Whitstable oysters! Monsieur Dildo! Sure, there were scenes of angst and trauma, but in the context of the hard knocks you take when you're living life full-throttle. Now that was a fun book. I am in the mood to read something similar-- and there's that book that's been sitting on my self for so long, about a 1750s prostitute, the cover calls it "bawdy"-- perfect!"

Slammerkin, in fact, sounded so much like what I was in the mood to read that I picked it up then and there and began. But lo! To my dismay, it was not remotely what I would describe as bawdy. I think of "bawdy" as "sexual in an earthy, humorous sense." Instead...



In less than a hundred pages, the desperately poor heroine's father dies, she is emotionally abused by her mother and stepfather, she is raped at the age of fourteen, she gets pregnant by her rapist, her parents disown her for being a slut, they throw her out and she is immediately beaten and gang raped, she gets a venereal disease from that rape, she becomes a prostitute, and since she's still pregnant, she gets her six-month fetus aborted by a hag with a sharpened stick.



Though the book was quite well-written, it was also incredibly grim. Not in the least what I had expected or was looking for at that moment.

Have you ever had a similar sensation of whiplash due to a massive mismatch between what you thought a book (or movie, etc) was and what you actually got?

Comments

[ellarien]

Not that bad, but a couple of months ago I was in the mood for a mystery and picked up Anne Perry's Half Moon Street, in which the angsting about Victorian repression and censorship turned out to rather overwhelm the actual mystery plot.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

In every Anne Perry I read in that particular series, the murderer turned out to either be or be influenced by whatever character was the crazy woman. After I called it about 50 pages in three times in a row, I stopped reading them.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yup. Friends kept saying "Ogh you have GOT to read Accidental Tourist it's just so fun and kooky and so much your kind of thing!"

So I bought it without really looking at it (the cover blurbs also talked about how fun it was) and one night when I was very tired and quite downhearted I retired and opened it--and in the first chapter what happens? A middle-aged couple are devastated when their single child--the very same age as my daughter at the time--is pointlessly murdered. Kooky fun?

I threw the book into the donation pile.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Man. I'd been meaning to read Slammerkin for a while now, but now I don't think I really want to. That's far more depressing than I would have guessed from the cover.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's on my to-be-read pile, but I think I may quietly move it over to my sell-to-Half-Price-Books pile.

[octopedingenue]

I rented Truly Madly Deeply to watch with a couple of friends because I was told it was "the funnier version of Ghost!" and the cover copy made it sound like wacky undead comedy romping. All three of us spent the last third of the movie clutching pillows and SOBBING. Sad!Crying!Alan Rickman = SO MUCH MORE DEPRESSING THAN PATRICK SWAYZE.

More recently, as compelling as it was, I'm not sure that I forgive Sarah Waters' Affinity yet.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I so do not forgive Affinity. I don't think I'm ever going to.

[octopedingenue]

It was gorgeous to read, but what is the point? Such a book should have been written with some consideration of a literary theme beyond "GOTCHA!", but what could it possibly be besides "Now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb"?

belated SPOILER warnings for "Affinity" post ABOVE this

[octopedingenue]

spoilers up ahoy!

[(Anonymous)]

Uh oh. I've got both Slammerkin and Affinity in the queue. Hmmm.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I actually love Affinity. In my mind, it's sad but not grim and depressing.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Slammerkin. Tough read, but good. Still, can imagine it would be upsetting if you didn't expect it.

My sister told me that M. Night Shayanaman wasn't scary, so I got several of his movies and took them off to the beach where I was staying in a house alone...

[seajules]

About fifteen years ago, I picked up Elizabeth Scarborough's Songs From the Seashell Archives series, under the very mistaken impression (influenced by both the cover quotes and backblurb) that they would be akin to Patricia McKillip's work. Turned out they were broad, shallow parodic sendups of certain fantasy novel conventions. I'd probably appreciate them now, but at the time I was not amused.

[larryhammer]

Huh. And I was disappointed with the Seashell Archives books because the packaging was promising me something that was, yanno, actually funny.

---L.

[seajules]

I was too disappointed that it was even trying to be funny that I didn't notice if it succeeded or not. I think there's still some part of my brain gnawing on some way to answer it with what I expected.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

One of my early dates with my now husband had us going to see Happiness - he was under the impression it would be an enjoyably dry comedy about New Jersey and wasn't aware that the plot involved the rape of more than one 11-yr-old. My husband is an ex-teacher, and gets even more squicked/enraged by that sort of thing than most people....

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

Oh, that happened to me with Happiness, too. What a horrible movie!

Slammerkin

[sheba-girl.livejournal.com]

I read that book last year. Well-written as you said, but ultimately unsatisfying bc it was just too depressing. I don't want to give away the end, but suffice it to say that as it was in the beginning, so shall it be at the end...

[veryshortlist.livejournal.com]

I rather liked Slammerkin. It was honest, without being overdramatic, and featured a rare sort of girl. She was the sort to do stupid things and then try to fix them. And though the ending is unbearably tragic, it makes sense.