The Woe-Is-Woman Bookclub
This is too much.
Grief, abuse, statutory rape, incest, slave labor, forced eating of rocks. Just some of the life-affirming topics covered thus far in my book club. And this month, I’m told, we’re reading The Time Traveler’s Wife… which, on the surface, might seem one of those chipper, girly, bookclub-y books: all romance and goo and Eat, Pray, Love-like nonsense. But, no! Look beneath the surface: there lies a girl who, though she has found love in this world, even that is denied her. Instead of being able to walk off into the sunset, live happily ever after… she’s forced to live dissatisfied ever after. For her Henry can’t stay, time rips him away; our heroine grows old and bitter and grey… A lovely reminder of the fate that will befall most of us women, even those of us not lucky enough to snag an Eric Bana doppelganger for a time.
I’ve started to dread these monthly get togethers.
Not the meetings themselves: our ladies are lovely, conversation is great, the wine and cheese always plentiful… but the inevitable slogging through of book after book, all elaborating upon and reminding us of the endless struggles of women in this world… It’s not the cheesy, veiled romance, Barnes and Noble book-of-month-table fun you think you’re signing up for! It’s exhausting!
The Other Boleyn Girl turns out not to be just a bodice-ripping, historical romance but the tragic tale of girls who must turn to incest in order to save their heads! Only not even incest and devil babies can save them from the scorn of Henry the VIII. Our attempt at popular book club selections left us with A Thousand Splendid Suns’ abusive, degrading husband (he of the forced rock-chewing) and The Year of Magical Thinking, a tale of lost love that hurt so badly it made you almost never want to find love in the first place. And we should have known better than to pick Lolita as an attempt at classical literature: Humbert Humbert (and the ghost of James Mason) haunt me to this day…
And the list goes on and on. Even our pass at children’s fantasy went awry. Turns out, The Golden Compass is not just the magical tale of a young girl with a gift; no, she also has the gift of megalomaniacal parents who want to murder her.
It’s enough to make me yearn to be a part of one of those bookclubs where gals only read Jane Austen and swoon over Edward Ferrars. Or one where we devote a year to all the mysteries of Twilight…
No?
Okay. I take that back… how boring! A serious discussion of Jane Austen would take away all the joy hidden in her pages. And any attempt at discussing Twilight would just humiliate me and everyone else forced to read that garbage. It’s the type of thing (atrociously written but terribly salacious) that I’d rather read alone, hiding in my room, away from the view of anyone with taste. So, give me my book club and our attempts at enlightening ourselves! I’ll save the trashy romance and the tales of happily ever after for my own time. For who needs to discuss books like those, anyway?
Tales of romance and happily-ever-after? I love them, but they’re better kept for the long nights at home alone, drinking wine and eating ice cream, feeling sorry for myself… and wondering when my Mr. Darcy- or Edward Cullen- will ever find me.
