Enjoli Commercial from 70's

12 Sharp

Have you ever been in a public restroom and heard an explosion in the next stall that made you giggle in spite of yourself? You know you’re being immature, and for the life of me, I don’t know why flatulence is sometimes funny. Janet Evanovich relies on that kind of crude humor throughout her novel, 12 Sharp, as the following line exemplifies: “Grandma bent to plug the amp back in and farted in the black leather hot pants” (263). Grandma goes on to ask, “Someone step on a duck?” and she farts again. Grandma’s line is silly and not terribly original, yet her character consistently makes us shake our heads and smile. 12 Sharp is the second Evanovich novel I have read, and both books rely on vulgarity, sexual innuendo, and shock humor that leave the reader laughing and feeling a guilty pleasure akin to Stephanie Plum’s enjoyment of “doughnut therapy.”

The novel opens with Stephanie and Lula, who “used to be a Ho’,” tracking the pervert, Melvin Pickle. Pickle, the name itself a phallic symbol, has been “caught shaking hands with the devil” (13) in the multiplex theater. Incredulously, Stephanie’s grandmother calls her cell phone, and she answers as Pickle is dangling from a railing where he is threatening to jump to his death. Grandma Mazur asks whether Stephanie is trying to rescue him or trying to make him jump, to which Stephanie replies: “In the beginning I was trying to rescue him…But I’m starting to change my mind” (21). The banter among characters tends toward a sarcasm that reminds me of a sitcom so much that I can almost hear a laugh track in the background as I read.

Like a sitcom character, Stephanie Plum is less than perfect. Her penchant for doughnuts, pizza, and beer make her an everyday person. Although she claims to be mediocre at her job, she seems to come out on top in most situations. According to Lula, they are better than Stephanie thinks: “I don’t think we’re completely incompetent. I think we’re closer to eighty percent incompetent” (11). “Ha ha ha” goes the laugh track. Lula’s outfits for the What are also humorous, not only because they are too tight, but also because they tend to be shiny gold or white vinyl to match her transvestite partner’s thongs. While Stephanie Plum and her cohorts consider the applicants for the new job to be a little strange, they do not seem to notice the oddity of Lula, Sally, or even Melvin.

Morelli, a conservative cop, and Ranger, a dark and mysterious security man, are the two men who capture Stephanie’s attention. A complicated living situation makes Stephanie tell them, “I’m divorcing both of you…I’m moving in with my parents” (228), but in reality, she cannot seem to let either of them go. After her fiasco with Scrog, she tells Morelli, “Something became very clear to me when I was waiting to see who was going to walk into my apartment…I love you” (317). She claims to love both men, but she ends the novel with Ranger feeding her icing off the cake in a way that reminds me of the proverbial ‘have her cake and eat it, too’ mindset.

Stephanie Plum offers a model of the woman that many women think they would like to be. If she were to choose one of the men, the fantasy of having the affections of two men would be missing from the book, and Plum would lose some of her independence. Women want to think of themselves as witty and clever and independent, but at the same time desirable and pampered. Stephanie Plum represents that ideal without ruining the fantasy by being perfect or unattainable. Like a common woman, she decides to work up her courage “by adding another layer of mascara” to her lashes before she goes in search of the “Un-Ranger” (108). Her strength and independence are magnified throughout the story, yet she never loses the vulnerability that makes her attractive to two men. Many women want to be the woman from the old Enjoli commercial who can “bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never, never let you forget you’re a man.” Stephanie Plum has those abilities and more with the exciting career, the witty dialogue, two handsome men, and the oddball sidekicks, much like a sitcom leading lady.

The story, a simple and fast read, wraps up almost as quickly as a television show, and we are not meant to think any harder than we do when we watch a sitcom. The sarcasm, the sexy banter, the eccentric minor characters, and the larger than life heroine are all traits of television show characters. The plots of 12 Sharp or other Evanovich novels could easily climax and close within the allotted time for t.v. shows. Considering the target audience for Evanovich stories, Enjoli might want to make a comeback with their commercial and sell perfume to those women who dream of being both independent and nurtured.

John Cougar Mellencamp - Pink Houses - Music Video via Noolmusic.com

The Secret Life of Bees

“Oh, but ain’t that America for you and me / Ain’t that America somethin’ to see, baby / Ain’t that America, home of the free / Little pink houses for you and me.” These well known lyric from John Cougar Mellencamp’s song, “Pink Houses,” relate to more than the pink house in The Secret Life of Bees. The pink house in this novel represents freedom for Lily and Rosaleen just as America symbolizes freedom for all. The pink houses in Mellencamp’s song represent the American dream and the home of the free. Rosaleen dreams of racial equality and the right to vote, and she risks her life for her conviction. Lily dreams of freedom from cruelty and a life of love, and she risks being “half killed” by T. Ray for the one person she loves, Rosaleen. Lily chases the dream of her mother as she leads Rosaleen to safety. The bright pink house is filled with the love of the “Calendar Sisters” and the Daughters of Mary, and in that home Lily learns what matters most.

“You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart – now that matters” (147). August explains to Lily that the bright pink color brings joy to May, and feelings matter more than anything else. Even though August prefers the more subtle tan, and even though the townspeople might talk, August chooses to please May because she knows, “The problem is [people] know what matters, but they don’t choose it…The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters” (147). August chooses what matters when she allows the runaways, Lily and Rosaleen, to stay at her house. Rosaleen has obviously been beaten and could be in trouble, and a white girl in a black home could jeopardize the simple sweetness of life on the honeybee farm. August chooses what matters, people in need, even though the racial unrest makes the decision difficult.

Lily, like August, values people over social norms. Despite the words of T. Ray and Brother Gerald, Lily has learned color blindness because she learned the meaning of love from Rosaleen. Rosaleen nurtures Lily after T. Ray’s abuse and works side by side in silence with Lily to clean the honey house after Lily’s angry outburst of throwing the honey jars. Rosaleen loves Lily with the unconditional love of a mother. August teaches Lily that love is patient as she waits for Lily to feel ready to talk about her mother. As Lily works and talks with August, she finds someone who cares about her favorite color and her favorite dessert. Lily grows to love August as she grows to love Zach, never thinking of their race, but only of the people they really are. Zach loves Lily, too, but without the luxury of forgetting her race. He promises that one day he will find her when they are free to love one another, but he also understands reality: “We can’t think of changing our skin…Change the world –that’s how we gotta think” (216). Lily represents that change by helping Rosaleen escape injustice and by loving people for who they are.

Lily loves others with the love she desires for herself. Her longing for love and her yearning for her mother are fulfilled by the “Calendar Sisters” and the Daughters of Mary. August, June, and May, named for the months of spring that their mother loved, symbolize the new life of spring and the new life that Lily seeks. Being in the pink house transforms Lily because she finds the nurturing that she has always craved. The universal need for a mother figure is apparent for all the females in the adoration of Our Lady of Chains, which also signifies the need for the Daughters of Mary to break free from oppression. Lily breaks free from her father’s abuse just as the circle of black women see the foundation of Civil Rights being built. The women come together to form a sisterhood that breaks the barriers of race, and the inclusion of Otis, Neil, and Zach breaks the barriers of gender as well. The unity of the Daughters of Mary proves the power of love to prevail in the face of any kind of struggle, and Lily begins to heal in that circle of love.

After Lily frees the bees in her bedroom at T. Ray’s house, she hears a voice saying, “Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open” (41). She flies to the safe haven of the pink house in Tiburon. Rosaleen’s jar is open, too, and she proudly registers to vote, but as her beating implies, she is not truly free to fly as she wants. The unwarranted incarceration of Zach reiterates this injustice and contradicts John Cougar Mellencamp’s lyrics: “Oh, but ain’t that America for you and me.” However, the little pink house in The Secret Life of Bees and in the song represents the dream. Lily’s dream of love is fulfilled as she turns to see her mothers, the Daughters of Mary, standing by her as T. Ray leaves the pink house.

August loves Lily and offers her a new home and a new life. August’s words of inspiration to Lily apply to the young girl and to anyone who has been oppressed: “All those times your father treated you mean, Our Lady was the voice in you that said, ‘No, I will not bow down to this. I am Lily Melissa Owens, I will not bow down’” (289). Lily does not bow down to her father just as Rosaleen does not bow down the white men who are beating her. As August explains, “Whatever it is that keeps widening your heart, that’s Mary, too, not only the power inside you but the love. And when you get down to it, Lily, that’s the only purpose grand enough for human life. Not just to love –but to persist in love” (289). Love heals all wounds and breaks all barriers. Lily is healed by love and the freedom from cruelty; on a grander scale, an entire people can be healed by love and freedom from cruelty. Isn’t that the American dream? “Ain’t that America, home of the free / Little pink houses for you and me.” Sometimes choosing what matters is difficult, but uplifting people is the only way to live and love.

The Lovely Bones

A good novel often challenges the concept of reality as we know it and compels us to find a greater truth than factual certainty. If we are caught up in the story, then we look through the lens of verisimilitude without doubt or question. I consider Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones compelling, but I found it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief as I neared the end of the book. Heaven is not represented in a manner consistent with my faith, and the temporary exchange of Susie’s soul for Ruth’s is beyond my scope of understanding or belief.

When Susie “falls back to the earth,” she realizes that she is not there to “chase after Mr. Harvey. I looked at Ray and knew why I was there. To take back a piece of heaven I had never known” (304). Really?? While many would agree that making love can be heavenly, can it really compare to Heaven itself? Most of the book brings the majesty of Heaven into question since Susie longs for her life on Earth. She watches her family and yearns for them. She fantasizes about Ray. She goes so far as to comment about life on Earth by saying, “Lonely, I thought, on Earth as it is in heaven.” Surely it is no oversight by Alice Sebold that Earth is capitalized, and heaven is not, an implication that her belief in the afterlife might differ from the predominantly Christian view of our culture. Even non-Christians would have to wonder about the advantage of going to Heaven if it is the heaven described in this book. It might seem great to have your favorite things replicated in the afterlife, but shouldn’t there be something more to hope for? If not, what is the incentive to make sacrifices in this life? Certainly the idea of a fourteen-year-old girl desiring to make love more than anything else seems contrary to the very idea of Heaven as it was originally defined.

Susie’s love for her family is easier for me to understand, but even then it is not the selfless love we might think of as heavenly. Knowing how desperately her little brother needs their father, his only real parent, Susie thinks to herself: “If he died, I would have him forever. Was this so wrong to want? … We stood – the dead child and the living – on either side of my father, both wanting the same thing. To have him to ourselves forever” (258). If Susie is in Heaven, isn’t she living a perfect existence? Why is she still unsatisfied and self-serving in her thinking?

True love is portrayed by Grandma Lynn, the alcoholic, ironically, since she is the one character who consistently looks out for others. She became my favorite when she applied Lindsey’s make-up for the memorial service, which meant she had to go without her own. Grandma Lynn is flawed, but she is spunky and caring. By the end of the book, Abigail learns to appreciate her mother as she thinks to herself, “When was it all right to let go not only of the dead but of the living – to learn to accept?” (318). Acceptance and love are healing to those who love and accept as well as those who receive love and acceptance.

Buckley is a sympathetic and likable character who enhances the theme of love. As a small boy, he is his father’s consolation: “Buckley drew back and stared at my father’s creased face, the fine bright spots of tears at the corners of his eyes. He nodded seriously and kissed my father’s cheek. Something so divine…the care a child took with an adult” (47). Buckley’s devotion to his father is unwavering until his father refuses to let him use Susie’s clothes in the garden. Buckley, finally frustrated, says, “You have to choose. It’s not fair” (256). I believe this scene is significant in its portrayal of grief. It is often those who are still alive who bring grieving loved ones back to life. However, the author seems to suggest something altogether different. Susie says, “You don’t notice the dead leaving when they really choose to leave you. You’re not meant to” (323). Is it the choice of the dead as the book claims? Franny, a mother figure in heaven, tells Susie that neither she nor the living will be ready to move on until she is done with the living. I see death and the afterlife much differently, but I agree that grief is the only option for those who lose a loved one.

Grief is a compelling theme in the novel, but I was distracted by the lack of verisimilitude in the plot and the narration. I simply could not suspend disbelief regarding Susie and Ray or concerning the descriptions of heaven. I felt eager to finish the book because I wanted the murder mystery to be solved, but even that fell short of my expectations. I wanted to know more about Mr. Harvey, but his accidental death by the foreshadowed icicle left me feeling unsatisfied…but probably not as much as a heaven that makes one wish for life on Earth.

Jemima Jones Journal

“But fairy tales can come true, and just like Jemima Jones, or Mrs. Ben Williams as she’s known outside the glossy magazine where she now works, if we trust ourselves, embrace our faults, and brazen it out with courage, strength, bravery, and truth, fate may just smile upon us too” (Green 373). The closing words of Jane Green’s Jemima Jones clarify one of the themes for those who may have skimmed over it or somehow missed the blatant references to it. In case Jemima herself does not reveal the themes to the reader, the third person interruptions explain the obvious. The book is not only par for “Chick Lit,” but also standard as a fairy tale with the perfectly happy ending. However, this fairy tale will not scare the children into listening to Mommy and Daddy, and there will be no bread crumb trail for girls to leave if they fly across the globe to meet men they don’t really know.

The Jemima fairy tale ends happily in every way despite the risks she takes. The book is perhaps one level above a Harlequin romance and probably akin to a Nora Roberts novel. Jemima’s reunion with Ben proves to be every bit as sappy: “‘Jemima,’ he whispers, as the smile leaves my face, and then, without planning it, thinking about it, we both stand up at exactly the same time and fall into one another’s arms” (354). And presumably the reader says, “Aaaaah” on the exhale as she cocks her head sweetly to the side. How sweet…the man who always valued her friendship now desires Jemima romantically…now that she is thin.

The messages in this book about perfect physiques, anorexic-like dieting, internet dating, and conditional love are dangerous ideas to support. The perfect “hard bodies” and unhealthy dieting represented in Jemima’s story duplicate what the covers of all the glamour magazines are already telling young females: You must be waif-like and flawless in order to be beautiful. While the romantic fantasy of “Chick Lit” is probably harmless, the messages about beauty are reprehensible. The American culture inundates females with the message that thin is beautiful, and imperfect bodies are unattractive, which drives some young girls to unhealthy extremes as Jemima exemplifies when she turns down a lunch date with Ben: “…Jemima would not have been able to make it to the gym tonight, so she skips lunch and exercises during her lunch break instead” (152). While exercising during lunch is not unhealthy in and of itself, Jemima’s visits to the gym occur more than once a day. “Might it be thus assumed that Jemima has become just a touch obsessive…” (152). Jemima’s diet and exercise regime become unhealthy as the third person narrator points out.

Both the third person narrator and Jemima explain too much as if they fear the reader is not sharp enough to understand the themes without help. For example, while in the book store, Jemima thinks, “Covers, so many covers, so many different, delectable pictures, and although, metaphorically speaking, it is the thing I hate most, when it comes to literature I always judge books by their covers” (52). Jemima’s thought opposes the superficiality about beauty in the story, but it is also a great irony since the cover of this book shows a scantily clad rear end, bare legs, and stiletto heels. The legs are positioned in the pose of a sex kitten, suggesting a much more tawdry story than the one underneath the cover. Despite the irony, Jemima’s thoughts in this scene begin the theme development that is summarized on the last page of the book.

The summarized theme refers to “courage, strength, bravery, and truth” (373). I have to wonder whether flying to meet Brad proves that Jemima is brave or foolhardy. Internet dating is dangerous because people can easily misrepresent themselves. Since this book falls into the “Chick Lit” genre, we can safely assume before we finish reading that Jemima will not be chopped into bits and stored in sandwich bags in Brad’s freezer. Then again, the fact that she comes out of the situation unscathed promotes internet dating as a safe and healthy way for young girls to find boyfriends. Jemima is not only safe at the end of it, but better for her experience. She learns that beautiful Brad loves overweight women, she wins the love of her heartthrob, Ben, and she lands the job of her dreams.

Sure, there are positive messages in the book about the confidence gained through healthy eating and exercise, but what does this book say about love? Did Ben love Jemima all along from the time he began confiding in her? Or did he only fall in love with her when he saw that she was thin and beautiful? Traditional fairy tales usually offer a moral to the story that teaches children about safety, justice, etc. This fairy tale is truly a fantasy with no moral to the story. The dangers of internet dating are not exposed, and Jemima’s anorexic tendencies simply go away. Jemima Jones is mildly entertaining, but it is not a book that promotes healthy attitudes for young chicks.

The Power and the Glory

"....for the kingdom, the power and the glory are Yours, now and forever. Amen." Following the Lord's Prayer with this line has been a part of every Sunday since I was a child. Graham Greene’s title immediately suggests that the power and the glory, which belong to God, are being questioned. I think it adds to the title to consider other lines of the prayer, such as, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The “whiskey priest” both seeks and offers forgiveness through the sacrament of confession. However, he reveals the quandary of the confessional: if a person is not truly sorry, then he cannot confess the sin. If he cannot confess the sin, then how can he be forgiven for the transgression? The “whiskey priest” is not sorry that he has a daughter because he loves her deeply, so he cannot bring himself to confess her conception as a sin because he is not sorry that he brought her into the world. He says to her, “I love you. I am your father and I love you. Try to understand that. I would give my life, that’s nothing, my soul…my dear, dear, try to understand that you are – so important” (82). His words would be moving except that his actions do not support his words.

His daughter seems to doubt the sincerity of his words. “She sat there on the trunk of the tree by the rubbish-tip with an effect of abandonment. The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit” (81). The priest is saddened by her lack of faith in him or in life, but he lacks the courage to be a good father to her just as he lacks the courage to be a good Father to the Catholic congregation at large. Even in prayer he is not really honest when “He prayed silently, ‘O God, give me any kind of death –without contrition, in a state of sin – only save this child’” (82). Again his words seem hollow since he leaves his daughter, contemplates the possibility of confessing and makes an act of contrition before his death. In another sin against a child, he also allows a boy to be taken hostage rather than stepping forward and identifying himself as a priest. The most unbelievable aspect of that scene is the fact that the boy’s own mother allows her son to be taken to be killed rather than identifying the priest. The priest is only human, and a flawed human at that, so how can his life be greater in importance than another life, especially the innocent life of a child? For me, this scene is far more despicable than his drinking.

The lack of contentment that leads to his drinking suggests a lack of faith as well. If he needs to numb himself in order to tolerate life, he must not see the power and glory of God. He feels a certain sense of duty as a priest, particularly to hear people’s confessions. He needs a confessor, so he sees the importance of providing that sacrament. However, he is incapable of confessing. Juxtaposed with a greater coward, Padre Jose, the “whiskey priest” seems as if he might redeem himself, but he never quite does that. Yes, he goes back to hear the confession of the Yankee with the knowledge that the mestizo is leading him to his death, but it feels more like resignation on his part than an honorable act. He does not appear to be accepting his death as a dutiful priest as much as he seems to be giving up.

The whiskey priest offers little hope, but he does expose important questions of faith. I think questioning faith can make it stronger as in the case of the little boy who considers converting to the lieutenant’s way of thinking, but decides that his mother is right about priests. That little boy’s acceptance of the priest at the end of the book implies that killing priests will not put Catholicism to death. Faith cannot be buried. Confession, a sacrament in the Catholic faith, is significant in the spiritual journey: “...Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power and the glory are Yours for ever and ever. Amen.”