A (Very) Little Romance: Match Me If You Can by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I wasn't planning on writing a review of Susan Elizabeth Phillips's chick lit novel Match Me If You Can, but it left such a bad impression on me that I must. I started out by enjoying it: the quirky opening seemed promising as the protagonist pleads with a drunk who has passed out under her car. She has to get to a crucial meeting that will supposedly save her business. The main character, Annabelle, is trying to revive her late grandmother's matchmaking service so that she can show her family that she's not a total failure, and her meeting is with a millionaire sports agent looking for a wife. At first, she seems pretty engaging, especially when she's sparring with her high profile client, Heath Champion (aka, the Python). The best part of this novel is her refusal to treat him like a superstar who's always right.

As the novel continued, however, I began to have misgivings. The first moment was when Portia, Annabelle's business rival, begins a relationship with Heath's bodyguard-with-a-heart-of-gold, Bodie. From the beginning, Portia is presented as a bitchy, overly ambitious businesswoman who is hated by all of her staff--because, you know, all high-powered female executives are unfeeling monsters making ridiculous demands under the guise of "high standards." I feel pretty confident that she'd have a lawsuit on her hands for forcing her employees to undress for regular, public weigh-ins. Of course, I'm not a high-powered lawyer, so what do I know? Her relationship with Bodie hinges on his understanding that she needs to be dominated in order for her real, softer side to come out. It reminded me of the first Vicky Bliss novel, Borrower of the Night, where her chauvinist colleague, Tony, says that she just needs to be dominated. Unlike Portia, Vicky treats this comment as the piece of ridiculousness that it is. Portia, however, has a life-changing experience. Ick.

Aside from the Portia sub-plot, Annabelle's friends felt like a bunch of stereotypes, as did the male athletes whom she bosses around whenever they show up to hang out with her (and I personally couldn't imagine why they put up with her. She really didn't seem like a lot of fun). The women are all part of a book club, but the men don't like to read. The women all get together to watch female erotica, and the men sit around talking football.

And then there are the sex scenes....there was a *lot* about women opening up like flowers and things like that. I think the romantic scenes would have been more effective without all of the over-the-top imagery. I read a reviewer somewhere saying that Phillips usually writes really good sex scenes, but these read a bit more like gynaecological exams.

As you might be able to tell, I wasn't particularly impressed with Match Me If You Can. I hadn't heard of Susan Elizabeth Phillips before finding this one in my public library's ebook database, and I was surprised to discover how incredibly popular she is. To each his or her own, I guess.

Finding a Place on the Prairie: Bich Minh Nguyen's Pioneer Girl

"Wagon Wheel" by David Hepworth is licensed under CC by 2.0

Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen is the story of Lee Lien, a second generation Vietnamese-American, who is obsessed with the Little House on the Prairie books. For Lee, the Little House books are more than a great series, but also a way for her to come to terms with her own nomadic childhood and uncertain sense of self. Like Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lee's childhood and adolescence was punctuated by frequent moves from one mid-western town to another. In Lee's case, she and her brother criss-crossed the mid-west with her mother and grandfather who supported the family by managing a series of Chinese buffet restaurants.

Some of the strongest sections of the book come in Lee's descriptions of her many childhood moves and the seemingly identical restaurants that her family manages. Nguyen skilfully interweaves a sense of dislocation, as well as the subtle, and not so subtle, layers of racism experienced by Lee and her family. Lee underscores the irony that her Vietnamese mother and grandfather run generic Chinese restaurants catering to a clientele that isn't particularly interested in the difference. The restaurant that Lee's family owns at the end of the story finds a degree of success, in part, by developing their own recipes for banh mi and jettisoning the orientalized script that characterizes so many Chinese menus.

Likewise, Lee must find her own identity in this story, and this, unsurprisingly, is not a straightforward question for her. She is unmoored in multiple ways: her second-generation immigrant identity in a rented apartment in a mid-western town leaves her with no clear sense of home; she has recently finished a PhD program, but has no job--in part, her adviser suggests, because she wrote a dissertation on Edith Wharton rather than on ethnic lit; and, for many reasons, she can't connect with either her mother or her brother.

As an escape from these various crises, she becomes intrigued by the possible connection between her family and Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter, who may have visited Lee's family's restaurant in Vietnam and left behind a gold pin. As the story progresses, this connection reveals other connections: between Lee's constantly-moving childhood and Laura's, as well as Rose's vexed relationship with her mother and Lee's own family situation.

To some extent, this novel is most effective at the upper registers. What I mean is that Nguyen has created a compelling main character, and the broad brushstrokes of Lee's experience present an absorbing view of an individual and of her family's experience as immigrants. What didn't work quite as well for me were some of the machinations of the plot: the brother's anger at the family, the family friend who may or may not have helped them out at various points, and the search for Rose's grandson. As a reader, I didn't care as much about those elements as about Lee's narration of her lived experience. For me, it was enough that Lee was obsessed with Rose and wanted to find out more of her story by reading her letters and diaries and visiting places where her she lived. While Lee's interest in Rose made little sense to her family, it made perfect sense within the logic of this narrative.

Becoming a Pioneer Girl

I was browsing in our local bookstore this morning, and I came across Bich Minh Nguyen's Pioneer Girl, a novel that interweaves a literature PhD's childhood love of the Laura Ingalls Wilder novels with her own family's immigrant history. I immediately knew this is a book that I *must* read: I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books as a child, it has a mystery at the heart of it, and the novel revolves around questions of American identity.

I was also drawn to the story because it brought to mind a recent conversation that I had with a grad student about how many historians could trace their scholarly interests to the Laura books. As the grad student put it, Laura's stories, with all their minute detail about daily life and making things like maple candy, are a "gateway drug" for young history-minded readers, especially young girls. Likewise, I'd say my interest in nineteenth century lit comes from my favorite children's books: Little Women and the Little House series. Even though a much more critical re-reading of these stories as an adult has worn off some of their aura, I also have very fond memories of my childhood obsession with these semi-fictional/semi-autobiographical accounts of life in the nineteenth century. As a little girl, I wanted to be one of those characters. If I were in elementary school right now, I'd probably be addicted to the American Girl stories, even though I don't think they are nearly as well written as the Little House series. I was sad to read recently that the American Girl doll series is moving away from the historical focus toward dolls that are marketed as mini versions of their owners. I may be romanticizing my own childhood too much, but this seems like a missed opportunity to spark young girls interest in history.

This is a long way of saying that I'm bringing a LOT of baggage to Pioneer Girl. I'll let you know what I think of it when I'm done.