The Continuity Girl by Leah McLaren. HarperCollins, 336 pages, $18.95
Many creative writing instructors employ the Sandwich Method when providing student feedback: a slice of praise, followed by the "meat" (the critical suggestions), followed by a final slab of positive reinforcement.
[Pause]
Ahem.
[Pause]
Well ... the typesetting in Toronto newspaper columnist Leah McLaren's new novel is certainly praiseworthy. The font selected, Electra, is an eye-pleasing serif. Unfortunately, poor Electra has endured unspeakable molestation courtesy of McLaren's prose:
"He owed her this baby, but that was not the only reason he was here in this phoneless phone booth ... pumping away (well, okay, more squeezing and pulling, at this point), trying to draft a few million able-bodied DNA servicemen. No, the truth was, he wanted a child as much as she did, but for entirely different reasons. Not for the cutsy clothes and mashed banana stuff, which was as frightening as it was a turnoff, but for the continuation of the larger narrative."The Continuity Girl illuminates the limitations of my thesaurus. Uber-lousy? Fifth-rate? Super-bad? None of above. There exists no English word that adequately describes the not-so-goodness herein. Even the German word SaumassigeSchreibmaschiene, which roughly translates into "putrid garbage typewriter prose," fails to convey the stench of this slush pile.
I feel no guilt dispensing such vitriol because a) McLaren no doubt received a sickening advance for this book and b) she is such a polarizing figure that there are no swing voters to sway. Anyone actually interested in this novel made up their mind long before it reached shelves, and stopped reading this review around the Electra zinger. Those still with me are part of the hiss-and-boo crowd seeking a little, well, schadenfreude.
I suppose a plot summary is in order - and, credit where it is due, this is not a flimsily disguised memoir. Meredith Moore, a 35-year-old continuity girl, decides that she wants a baby, and the appropriate amount of mayhem ensues. And ... that's basically it.
There are plenty of diversions: a trip to England to visit with Meredith's nutter mother, a stalker gynaecologist, transgressive artists and a mysterious father figure. A large supporting case of self-obsessed, vapid urbanites round out the novel. Where does McLaren find literary inspiration for such creatures? Alas, such a question will remain an insolvable mystery.
There is not much more worth talking about here. I'm donating the remainder of my allotted real estate to the other reviewers sharing this page. This strategy will deprive McLaren of the crucial element that sustains her entire oeuvre - attention. McLaren is a provocative pool toy that is kept inflated only by the warm air of the chattering classes. For those who wish she would disappear, the solution is simple: Stop reading her SaumassigeSchreibmaschiene, stop talking about her between sips at the water cooler, and she will soon shrivel into nothingness. It's that simple.
Before I can take my leave, I must provide a final slice for my book review sandwich, but finding another praise-worthy element of The Continuity Girl is the most difficult task this humble reviewer has ever encountered. I finally discovered that which I required in Stephen King's book, On Writing:
"One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose," he writes, explaining that one novel like Valley of the Dolls or Flowers in the Attic "is worth a semester at a good writing school, even with the superstar guest lecturers thrown in."
If King is correct, then reading Ms. McLaren's new novel is equivalent to a Master's Degree in Creative Writing.
From Oxford.