I know this one's been out for a while, but I've only just gotten around to reading it. I understand why Kinsella is so popular--she's expanded on the Bridget Jones formula with a compelling central
character who is both deeply flawed by shallowness and much smarter and more capable.
At the same time that I understand the allure of Kinsella's compulsively readable books, I also find them extremely stressful to read. I almost wasn't able to finish *The Undomestic Goddess* because it made me too anxious. The experience of reading reminded me of watching *I Love Lucy* as a child--whenever Lucy was about to humiliate herself, I'd run out of the room so I didn't have to see it. Likewise, Rebecca Bloomfield, the protagonist, sets herself up for similarly excruciating moments of exposure. This is, of course, a device for creating narrative suspense: an author can create such suspense in a multitude of ways, anywhere from having a character stalked by a mass murderer to overspending on her Visa. If you want to see the literary roots of
the financial plot as narrative device, you have only to look to Trollope. On the whole, though, I enjoyed the characterization of Rebecca more than the agony of her bad choices. The two are inextricable, however, and I was able to enjoy the novel (and its follow-up, *Shopaholic Takes Manhattan*) much more when I realized that everything was going to be okay. Kinsella’s not really interested in punishing her characters, and Becky’s solution to her shopping problem in *Manhattan* is absolutely inspired.
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