Shades of I Wish I’d Written that Book but I Don’t Really Get it

Have you read the sex novel yet? You know the one. It’s been all over the news that when women read this book they want to have sex. I’m reading it and it doesn’t make me want to have sex. It makes me want to lecture the twenty one year old girl in it. It makes me want to edit it.

Normally, I don’t believe in throwing anyone’s book under the bus. First, because writing a book is really hard. Not crab-boat-coal-mine-jobs hard, but it’s hard to stare at a blank word document and write words so amazing and insightful that you want to share them with the world so strangers can criticize them. Second, opinions about books and their content is really, really subjective (this is always the last sentence of a rejection letter, BTW, right before the agent wishes you good luck finding another agent.) Just because I don’t like a book doesn’t mean that ten million other people won’t like it. Can I just have a moment here? I googled that. More than ten million copies of that damn book have been sold. Note to self- learn to love this genre and write it. But since the Sex Novel has gone beyond being a book and has become instead, a phenomenon, I feel okay about “discussing it.” Besides, the author has sold so many copies that one bitter, newby writer saying, “I don’t get it” won’t even make a blip on her gigantic bestselling screen.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that I have daughters the same age as the college-girl-turned-sex-slave in the Sex Novel so I begin the whole process from the place of euwww. And I’m mad at the girl’s parents for not having exposed her to enough people and places for the first twenty one years of her life. She goes to an office building and she is so impressed by elevators and windows, she’s ready to screw anyone with a file cabinet. And why isn’t she more confident? Sweetie, you’re about to graduate from college, you’re not a seven year old! Sit up straight, ask this asshole questions for the college newspaper, write the answers and take them home to your stupid reporter roommate who sent you to do her job just because she got the sniffles (and if I were her mother, I would tell her to take the Dayquil and go and interview the asshole herself—sometimes we get sick but we still have work to do. Suck it up cupcake!) I’ve barely made it past the premise of the book and I’m already pissed off! I’m not feeling like having sex yet but I would totally stop reading at this point and have a discussion with my husband. I want to talk about the raising of our daughters so I could get reassurance that they are smarter and more confident than Sex Novel Girl. Clearly, I already don’t get it.

Beyond the content itself, I have grammar and word issue issues. I’m annoyed by words being used as verbs when they’re not really verbs. Like disrespect. Disrespect was a perfectly good noun for decades. Why does is have to be a verb now? I also hate weirdly ineffectual adverbs (not like “weirdly,” that’s the perfect adverb for this sentence. Because this is my blog, that’s why.) I’m not a big fan of adverbs anyway, they kind of stop me in my tracks when I’m reading and I analyze whether they should be there or not. The verbs-that-should-be-nouns and awkward adverbs were distracting. “His mouth quirks up, and he stares appraisingly at me.” “He shrugs noncommittally.” “His eyes narrow, speculatively.” “Andrea hesitates, gaping at him.” I’ll grant that one could probably stare appraisingly, although “appraising” does suggest a bit more eye movement than does staring. But how does a mouth quirk? How does anything quirk? Can quirk really be a verb? He quirks, she quirks, we are quirking? And isn’t a shrug by nature noncommittal? “He firmly accepted the proposal with a shrug.” I know, I know, I’m totally missing the point. Although if Andrea in her entirety is gaping at him, what does he need the college girl for? Andrea appears to be easy pickings!

You’re thinking. “God, Rebecca, you are such an uptight bitch! And you are just jealous that millions more people bought the Sex Novel than the stupid novel you wrote.” Totally. You are right on both accounts. I am the first to admit that I am both an uptight bitch and very jealous. Let’s take that statement as a given.

Okay- blah, blah, blah, helicopter, blah, blah, blah, sex dungeon, blah, blah, blah, signed a nondisclosure agreement before Richy Rich tied me up and humiliated me—finally the sex scene cometh!

Ladies, he’s such a creeper, how does this excite you? He has such a disturbing Daddy/daughter relationship with Sex Novel College Girl. I mean I know women get off on all kinds of weird fantasies, stuff they wouldn’t actually want to do in real life but he makes me feel so icky. And she makes me feel so irritated. And they’re quirking all over the place! Lips quirk sixteen times in this book, I searched it! And eyebrows quirk once. How can any woman get in the mood in the presence of such misuse of a perfectly good noun?

Do I wish I’d written this? Hell, yes! But I didn’t. And my novel about an autistic child isn’t going to have the same wide range appeal. I probably won’t finish reading the Sex Novel though. It’s supposed to instill sexual desire not the desire to attack my ereader with a red pen and call my children and yell at them about the importance of high self-esteem. I know this book is a huge club that millions of women have joined but I don’t get it. It only made me shrug appraisingly and quirk noncommittally.