Dial L For Loser

Title - Dial L for Loser
Author - Lisi Harrison
ISBN - 9780316115049
Publication Date - August 2006

Plot - Generated from the Clique series of novels, the story Dial L for Loser is a rather uncomplicated tale, despite the complications that the characters try to throw at each other.  The plot consists of the girls heading out to Los Angeles to audition for a part after being expelled from OCD.  Dylan's mother ends up getting them the opportunity to audition for the part after the lead of the films quit.  Claire ends up landing the lead role in the movie and the other two auditioned, Massie and Alicia,  pretend to be happy for her.  Claire works hard and does well but her "friends" have something special in story for her.  They end up ambushing her on a segment of Dial L for Loser, humiliating her on live TV.

Critical Review-  Complexity is not the name of the game when it comes to much of the Chic Lit genre.  Most of what is interesting about them is not about the major plots, but about the minor subplots and gossip that is being bantered about.  The curiosity comes from understanding what each character is thinking and how they are going to react to the other characters in the novel.  Although the reasons for doing certain things seem to not be all that complex after gaining an understanding for who each character is. Massie is the leader and gets upset when attention is drawn away from her. Alicia is the second in the group although she is the lead gossip and will go along for whatever Massie wants.  Claire is the one who is kind of the outsider as she is not one who has money, and yet she is beautiful and has a pleasant personality which ingratiates her to the rest of the group.  However she is also the one who is more innocent, and thus others have the ability to trick her more often.  While one can easily understand the novels by understanding the motives of the characters, it is a creditable enough entry in the series to be mildly amusing.

Reader's Annotation- Claire is going on an all expenses paid trip to Hollywood and has landed the lead in a picture.  Will everything go smoothly for her?  Not if Massie has anything to say about it.

About the Author- Lisi Harrison was born in Toronto Canada, and raised Jewish for much of her young life.  She continued in Hebrew school all the way til the ninth grade.  From there she went to a public high school.  Her education then continued as she went to be a fill major at a school in Montreal.  After being in there two years she was convinced she would be a better writer than a film maker and dropped out.  She would then pursue a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Writing.

From there she moved on to working for MTV in a casting position, eventually putting her writing degree to use writing for the network, finally becoming head of network development.  While working at MTV she developed the idea for the Clique series and began writing the novels.  Eventually she was able to quit and pursue her goal of being a full-time writer.

Genre- Chic Lit

Curriculum Ties - Compare and contrast to the novels of social manners by Jane Austen.  How are the themes different.  Would these people have ended up disgraced in a Jane Austen work?

Booktalking Ideas - How is the Clique Series and much of the Chic Lit works in general a more modern day novel about manners?

Reading Level/Interest Age - Grade 9+

Challenge Issues - Backbiting, gossip and just a little sex can get a novel banned.

Overcoming challenges - Have a comparison chart with a good Jane Austen novel.  Discuss the characters of ill repute and how they are impacted negatively, and compare to what happens in a novel like Dial L for Loser.

Why Included -  I just decided I would get a final chic lit novel, as I wanted to have a wide variety of Chic literature included.

How to Ruin My Teenage Life

Title - How to Ruin My Teenage Life
Author - Simone Elkeles
ISBN - 0738710199
Publication Date - 2007

Plot - Amy Nelson-Bank is the product of unmarried parents, trying to figure out some way to make sense of her life.  She begins the novel moving to Chicago to live with her father, as a result of her mothers impending marriage.  She moved away at the beginning of high school and has stayed there to be able to develop some consistency in her life.  But as she is growing older, she is dealing with what it means to grow up, and how to have appropriate relationships with different people.  She goes through a series of struggles understanding this.  Various subplots include, using the cell phone too much so needing to repay her father by getting a job.  She has a friend who is in love with her that she kind of leads on, despite caring for someone else who fits more into the world of which she is a part.  She draws drama to herself by attempting to set her father up on a blind date through a service, neglecting to tell her dad that she was doing this.  And she has a best friend who seems to develop romantic attachments in every conceivable direction, even with a Muslim despite the fact that she is Jewish. 

Despite all of the travails of our lead character, she seems to make some semblance of sense out of her life.  She ends up getting the right Jewish boy, and convincing him that she is going to be OK while he fulfills his service to his country.  She and Nate come to some soft of an understanding about their friendship.  She no longer has to worry about his attraction towards her anymore.  And she has carved a niche for herself in Chicago with her dad, somewhere she feels she can call home.  Ah... if there just weren't plastic handcuffs in the back of her dad's car.

Critical Review - Simone Elkeles has written an inviting novel, focusing on the world of Amy Nelson-Bank.  The key to this novel is the engagement that you have with the person of Amy.  She is the narrator of the novel and its all told from her perspective.  To be successful she needs to be an engaging personality, and have an air of realness about her, which Elkeles writes very effectively.  Furthermore we get a good sense of the community to which she is a part.  This includes places to socialize, people they socialize with, and the religious institutions to which they are a part.  It is essential to convey this in a delicate manner and not a heavy handed way so that you feel for the characters plights, yet do not rebel against what the community standards are.  With her deft writing and wit, I believe Elkeles has accomplished just that.

Reader's Annotation - Amy Nelson-Bank is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime: love.  Please don't let her own foolishness get in her way.

About the Author - Simone Elkeles was a product of her Chicago upbringing.  She carries with her a deft sense of humor about life and those around her.  Her acerbic wit can be attributed to growing up in the 80s and seeing all of the "rad" things that were around her.  The punk era and boys with eye-shadow were all the rage.

Through this prism she had a unique perspective about what it meant to be growing up, and how to deal with the relationships around her, especially with members of the opposite sex.  She has thus become an author of teenage books.  She wants to be able to reflect a little humor and the teens around her.

Genre - Chic Lit, Drama

Curriculum Ties - Have an examination on the various types of literature that are included as a part of the Chic Lit genre.  What does it mean to be chic lit?

Booktalking Ideas - Have everyone describe a situation where they thought they had planned everything out to the last detail, and somehow it all unravels before them.

Reading Level/Interest Age - Grade 9+

Challenge Issues - None

Why Included - I wanted to include various types of Chic Lit as its hard to pinpoint exactly what is Chic Lit

Alison Rules

Title - Alison Rules
Author - Catherine Clark
ISBN - 0060559810
Publication Date - 2004

Plot -Alison has blossomed into a beautiful woman.  She has smarts, good looks and good friends.  Yet she has a bunch of rules that she has set up for herself, including not using her locker as that is a place of primarily bad news.  Why has Alison set up all of these rules?  She does not reveal this to the reader's right away.  Instead she keeps living her life trying to stick to all of these rules because they seem to be her guard that keeps her balanced.  What we end up finding out is that it is as a result of the death of her mother that she has put all of these rules together.  All of the boundaries were meant to protect her from the outside world. 

Eventually she would end up putting barriers between her and her best friend Laurie, because they end up liking the same guy.  And there is no way to deal with that.  They end up having a fight over it.  And Alison tries to patch things together by refusing the boy they both like.  She makes things worse, and Laurie and Alison try to come to some resolution about it, but fate intercedes one more time, and Laurie is taken away, never giving Alison the chance to fully reconcile with her friend. 

The last portion of the novel is Alison trying to let go of all of the pain of everything.  She knows that she needs to release the pain of her mom's death, as she needs to release the pain of her friends death. She knows that she has to crawl out of that shell, and that there are no amount of rules that can protect her from doing that.  And eventually she knows she will have to connect with the boy that she likes, because she can no longer live her life in fear of violating any rules.  The rules do not always protect  you.  Sometimes they just keep life out.

Critical Review - Catherine Clark weaves an interesting, somewhat disjointed tale of Alison, the girl who is trying desperately to protect herself from what is going on around her.  The story is somewhat disjointed as the protagonist herself.  We do not know the motivation for everything that Alison does.  As a result we are unclear about what to make of the complex character that is Alison.  Eventually we get the understanding that she is trying to keep life out, and protect her own little world that she has set up.  But the moment that Laurie leaves, before she ends up dying by jumping into the river, we know that Alison is desperately alone inside with the walls that seem more like a tomb.  Clark does a good job of not making transformation immediate and gives Alison a chance to grieve, not only for her lost friend, but for her lost mother as well. 

Reader's Annotation - A day in the life of Alison consists of spending time with her friend Laurie, avoiding her locker, and keeping her feelings to herself.  There are separate rules for each of these things.  Is someone going to help Alison Break them?

About the Author - Catherine Clark, originally from Massachusetts, now calls Minnesota her home.  Currently working as a bookseller in St. Paul, she spends much of her time following a variety of pursuits.  These include teaching and running.  Her first couple of novels had semi-autobiographical moments in them, including riding to bus as a teenager because her parents insisted.

Genre - Chic Lit, Drama

Curriculum Ties - Discuss why the rules fail to protect Alison in the end. How does the novel follow the format for setting, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution.  Discuss whether there is a satisfactory resolution to Alison Rules or is it somewhat unresolved. - Literature

Booktalking Ideas - Discuss the nature of the Rules that are developed by Alison?  Discuss whether rules protect or harm people in the end.  Why/Why not?

Reading Level/Interest Age - Grade 9+

Challenge Issues - None

Why included - Another opportunity to explore the chic lit genre, although I would not entirely classify this as chic lit as its themes are darker and consist of much less gossip and innuendo that the others in the genre might.

Splendor : A Luxe Novel

Title - Splendor : A Luxe Novel
Author - Anna Godbersen
ISBN - 9780061626319
Production Date - 2010

Plot -  As complex a plot as their as as point of view in the novel shifts seamlessly from one character to the next, Splendor tells the story of several women growing up and dealing with relationships issues around the turn of the century.  The fourth and last in the series of Luxe novels the story is bookended by the character of Diana Holland, trying to catch up with her first love, Henry Schoonmaker as he is supposed to be fighting overseas.  When we catch up with Henry, he is not fighting overseas, but rather running drills off of Cuba with his commander who keeps him around something like a pet. Elizabeth Holland is married to her second husband, hiding the fact that she was already with child from her first short lived marriage.  Penelope Schoonmaker is trying to to land other foreign men with the knowledge that her husbands care and affections tend toward somewhere else.  Finally Carolina Broad is fearing exposure of her past because she did not come from a family with money and inherited it.  She has fallen in love with someone but someone else is on her tale threatening to expose the secrets that she had.

As is common with chic lit there is much wringing of hands and subtleties that are being played out behind the scenes with complex resolutions abounding.  Elizabeth finds out that her second husband murdered her first to get a hold of some land that was held.  And she in turn murders the second husband, somehow getting away with it.  Carolina Broad is exposed and the man leaves, but not for the reason she thinks.  She it told that he is leaving to work things out because she didn't feel like she could tell him the truth.  Penelope Schoonmaker finds that exposing Henry to ridicule is not that much fun and that she is being used by her foreign suitor.  Finally Diana decides that despite her love for Henry, and Henry's love for her, that they belong in two different places, and it wouldn't be fair to make the other person be where they did not want to be.  At the end she views from a perspective of history, everything that has happened, grateful to have experienced it all despite the pain that might have been caused.

Readers Annotation - Scandal, affairs, misdirection and gossip abound in Splendor, the final novel in the Luxe series.

About the Author - Anna Godbersen, born in Berkeley California, and educated at Barnard College in Massachusetts took up writing with the Luxe series of novels.  While very little is known about her past she maintains a blog on her website that she discusses the novels that she is writing and how she relates to any one of the characters.

According to Godbersen, the character she relates to most in the Luxe Novels is Diana.  She is the one who is somewhat flighty and younger than the rest of the people involved.  She is experiencing love and its wonders as well as its heartaches for the first time.  As Anna sees her, there is a kind of wide eyed wonder which she also has about the world, wanting to know its secrets.  About her writing, Godbersen describes the excitement of the written as well as the unwritten word.  To her, what is unsaid can almost be as fascinating as what is actually put down on paper.

Genre- Chic Lit

Curriculum Ties - Historical Fiction as a genre- Literature 

Compare and Contrast The Luxe series with a novel such as War and Peace set in a slightly earlier period if Russia. - Literature

Booktalking Ideas - Talk about what it would have been liked to live around the turn of the century.  What was the attire; what were the customs; what did it mean to be wealthy?  Address what it was like to have old money versus new money.  How much different was it in the United States versus other parts of the world?

Reading Level/Interest Age - Grade 9+

Challenge Issues - Affairs, lying, cheating and murder abound in this series.

Overcoming Challenges - Be prepared to compare what is in the novels versus the typical soap opera that exists today. 

Why Included -  I wanted to include several different chic lit novels, and I was always partial to historical fiction.

Gossip Girl

Title - Gosspi Girl : A Novel
Author - Cesily Von Ziegesar
ISBN - 0316910333
Publication Date - 2002

Plot - Serena van der Woodsen has been at a private boarding school for quite some time, and now she is coming back into the neighborhood to upset the social scene as it were.  Ah the life of being a teenager, from sexual rumors and innuendo, Serena is about to upset the world of the high school upper class in this community.  From jealousies to rumor, people are about to stop Serena at any cost from getting what she seems to want.  When truth gets thrown out the window at this School, Serena is challenged to make a life that is not exactly what she had expected, but she seems to be all right with this ending.  Blair Waldorf sees that Serena is going to get something that she wants, and lying is not beyond her to take it from her.  They both seem to want Nate, but Serena has already had her hands on Nate, so Blair lets people think all kinds of wild and crazy stuff from her sleeping around to spreading STD's to crashing and burning with drugs.  Nothing is beyond Blair to stop Serena from keeping Nate.  Of course, lies are bound to create trouble in the long run, and Serena finds that despite the lies, she has found people who like her for who she is, in Dan and Jenny.  The best people in the end to hold onto, are those who like you, regardless of what anyone says about you.

Critical Review - A series of little vignettes tell the story of Serena van der Woodson and how she has an impact on the high school that she comes back to after being away at boarding school. Rumors follow as any new kid comes to a school, and bigger rumors follow kids that have left a school and then come back.  This is the world of all of these rumors at hyper speed.  It would seem to be an excellent choice for the High School Girls set who are caught up in the world of gossip, where the truth easily gets brushed aside, and the rumor takes on a  truth of its own.  I did appreciate that despite all the crazy rumors going around that the reader was allowed into the world of  Serena, to show how she felt about things as the truth was given a back seat.  And despite the lack of morality being told about, beginning with a quote from Oscar Wilde ("Scandal is Gossip made tedious by Morality"), there is a moral subtext here.  We are not left without some conclusion to be gained.  As Serena asks Dan at the end about what he thinks about all of the rumors, he does not believe them for a second.  The people who are important to us should be those who have faith in who we are, despite the rumors.

Readers Annotation - The new school girl in town has everything: looks, personality, charm, and the eye of every kid in school.  What is Blair Waldorf to do about it?  Lie!  Come to the World of Gossip Girl, where lies are truth, and truth means only as much as what someone believes.

About the Author - Cecily Von Ziegessar grew up in the world of Gossip Girl.  She knew first hand about the lives of the young and rich, whose worries did not tend to their parents business, but who was sleeping with whom; who got drunk; and who was taking the latest drug of choice.  She was raised in the boarding school system, where you were away from your parents for months at a time, and you developed your own set of morals to fit what you wanted. 

Her favorite quote: "Success is in the details," perfectly encapsulates both the novel and the success of the Gossip Girls Series on a broad scale.  Von Ziegessar's attention to detail in the novels gives the reader a good understanding of the mind and thought of each character.  It is the nuance in the characters that has brought her great success.

Genre - Chic Lit

Curriculum Ties - Discuss Appearance vs. Reality and the nature of Gossip.  - Ethics
Discuss some of the broad themes in Literature presented in the novel - Hubris (extreme pride)  --Who is going to be falling?

Booktalking ideas - Discuss the success of the Internet and the blogging community.  How can a blog positively/negatively effect the world around us?

Reading Interest - Grade 9+

Challenge Issues - The novel includes extreme sexuality, alcoholism and drug use without seemingly any real consequences.

Overcoming Challenges - Talk about previous generations of authors whose morals seemed to be lacking.  Talk about how the novels reflect society and the importance that society see its own reflection.  The book can be discussed in terms of morals and how morals are developed.  Provide material for parents to interact with teens concerning individuals with little to no moral understanding.

Why Included - I was not really looking forward to the Chic Lit section of this assignment, but I felt it needed some balance, and I found the reading to be far more enjoyable that I would have considered it to be upon first glance.