Sep 09 2009
Sundays at Tiffany’s by James Patterson
I don’t know why I do it to myself. Really, I don’t. Maybe I’m a masochist. Maybe it’s because cynicism hasn’t completely and utterly killed the tiniest bit of hope that I have that an author can successfully navigate and cross over into different genres. Maybe I’m just plain dumb. Patterson’s book, Sundays at Tiffany’s was just plain awful. They seriously shouldn’t let authors that have a demonstrated track record in being awful at writing in a certain genre continue to write in that genre, especially where they’ve had so much success in another genre, specifically mystery/thriller.
Anyways, at the beginning of the novel, we meet 8 year old June Margaux, the only child of a chic, wealthy and successful Broadway producer named Vivianne. Since her mother is so busy at work and her father is so busy vacationing with his new wife, June, who is the slightly chubby little girl in the background, spends most of her time on her own. Her imaginary friend, Michael, is always with her, entertaining her and helping her to see how absolutely wonderful she is inside. What June doesn’t know is that Michael has to play by the imaginary friend rules and leave her when she’s nine, even though she won’t want him to and he doesn’t want her to. He manages to live with himself by saying that she’ll forget him immediately, and leaves her at her ninth birthday party. But that isn’t quite the case - she doesn’t forget him. She even creates a Broadway production and a movie about him. Twenty-three years later, he sees Jane again and her life is still somewhat of a mess - controlling mom, jerk of a boyfriend, no self esteem and nostalgia for an imaginary friend that she can’t quite forget as easily as she was led to believe.
I had to suspend a lot of disbelief for this novel. And I found that I couldn’t bear the saccharine love story either. An imaginary friend that somehow comes to life and falls in love with the little girl (now adult) that he was a friend to? Um, no. Just doesn’t quite cut it for me. I didn’t quite grasp the rules of being an imaginary friend - do you age or not? Do you have the ordinary physical needs of a human being? The role wasn’t really defined and distracted from the utterly predictable story. Oh wait, that distraction actually made a mindless, awful book that much easier to get through! At least the writing style was such that the novel moved quickly because if I had to read anymore of that book, I think that I would have wanted my eyes to be gouged out with a spoon.
Leave this one off of your list!
Book 64/100
