Remember Me? Snark Revamped

Sophie Kinsella

Scale of 1-10: 4
Pros: Um...no one overspends. No cutesy overdraft letters from earnest, unrealistically patient bank managers. Though there is a bill for a glass leopard. I guess Kinsella just can't help herself.
Cons: Meandering plot and the same staggeringly irritating heroine utterly bereft of common sense who persons every single one of Kinsella's novels and constantly makes bad decisions, plunging herself into ever-increasingly hot water until the hero arrives to save her from herself.

The original review I wrote of this really ripped it apart. My problem with Kinsella's books - and it's a big one - is that all her heroines are simpletons. Shopaholic Becky never learns anything and is the same idiotic spendthrift every single book. She never grows as a character even the tiniest iota...though I've only managed to push through the first 2 books in the series, so I suppose it's possible Bloomwood wakes up and smells the bankruptcy sometime in Book 3 or 4, but I wouldn't hold my breath. And I hated the Wickham-penned novel The Gatecrasher because most of the characters were vapid and bland, and those that weren't were not at all likeable, while the title character was a complete and utter bitch.

For 3/4 of it's meandering, soul-sucking way, Remember Me?, follows standard Kinsella formula, which is to say that nothing happens. There's no character development and no real discernible plot. The whole book just lollygags around while it's main character, Lexi Smart (boy, talk about your misnomers), shops and goes to tea and just generally whines about life as she gets into utterly ridiculous and unrealistic scrapes, until suddenly, in the last 1/4 of the book, a solution to everything falls neatly into her lap and every problem she has is miraculously solved in one fell swoop. In fact, the final 1/4 of the book is true to form as well, but for one small detail: there is actually character development and growth in the final chapter(s) of the book.

Hallelujah.

Sure, most of the book is all, "Oh, I have amnesia. Oh, I'm married. Hurray, I have money; I think I'll go shopping! Oh, I'm a bitch and nobody likes me. Oh, I can't remember anything of the last 3 years, and my old friends all hate me - I know: I'll buy them presents! Oh, I just can't do anything right. Hurray, my friends figured out I really do have amnesia and I'm not a bitch anymore, but no one knows why I turned into one. Oh no, my company is phasing out my department - all my friends will hate me again. What's that you say? I knew this was coming and I put together a supersecret plan to stop it? I have a file? A blue one? Where is it? You don't know? Oh no! What will I do?! Gasp! There! I found it! I shall brandish it over my head and proclaim loudly that as god is my witness, I shall never go--wait. That's too long. I shall just sing gaily, 'Here I am, to save the day!' Oh yes, sweep me off my feet my handsome hero and carry me away! We'll always have Paris!" (Some leeway taken there, but it mostly follows the actual plot.) However, in the final pages, Lexi does actually learn something about herself. And she grows a bit of a spine. More, she actually takes responsibility for herself and her destiny, and GROWS UP. That's right, a Kinsella book which ends with an actual adult heroine. I hardly knew how to react.

I'm not saying it's an awesome book. But it doesn't suck like I thought it did when I wrote my original review (having put it down in disgust) the day before I finished it, and frankly, it needs to be about 100 pages shorter, because if I weren't a literary die-hard who is bound and determined to finish even the crappiest books, and a masochistic reader who will doggedly punish myself by continuing to plough through books I abhor and despise until the very final word, I never would have discovered the pleasantly surprising ending. I'm still absolutely finished with reading any Kinsella book again ever, but by the end of Remember Me? I was over my hatred and happy enough to actually recommend this to lovers of mindless chicklit...with the caveat that it really is 75-100 pages too long* and that it's perfectly okay to skip over mass sections. But that's enough to raise my score of it from a 2 to a 4. And apparently, that's all I can ask from a Kinsella novel.




* For the record, it's worth noting that were the book shorter, this would be a much happier review with a higher score.