Celebrity book club
Don’t laff: Brit’s lit ain’t (think of rhyme that means "feces")
As a Powerful Person, I have many Powerful Friends who basically trip over themselves to hep me to the latest news. One such pal (a publishing industry bigshot who shall hereby go unnamed) slipped me the top-secret proofs (printed on special un-photocopyable paper that basically melts to the touch of greasy fingers) of A Mother's Gift, the debut novel from singing sensation B. Spears. Co-writ w/ her mom, the book is classified as being in the "ages 4-8" reading level. Experts believe the writing level to be in the v. same ballpark, making A Mother’s Gift just about the perfect time-killer b’tween episodes of Popstars.
Editors thru-out time have agreed upon only one thing: the best indication of lit’rary talent is a successful pop-singing career – just ask G.Vidal & N.Mailer, who started busking together in the East Village straight outta high school. While arrogant wags fill column-inches w/ speculation over whether the Backstreet Buddies will release Kiss-styled solo albums, I’m filling entire diaries wondering if they’ll ever release solo novels. (There’s hope for both possibilities, what w/ that Tragically Hip dude packaging his solo album & verse volume together, thereby tricking music fans into buying not just a poetry book but a Canadian poetry book at that. Brilliant and fiendish.) But – and I don’t mean to sound too much like a 40-yr-old middle-manager in an Internet chatroom — let’s forget about the outside world & talk s’more about Britney Spears.
The key to great literature is a great title. (Case in pt: F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was "this close" to going down in history as the guy who wrote Gatsby, He’s Just OK. And we won’t even get started on Hemingway’s The Sun Also Makes Raisins.) The Britney novel has a great title: A Mother’s Gift. Wow. In three simple words, the Spearses have captured the epic sweep of generations, the hopefulness of parenthood, the joys of shopping.
Here’s a snippet of official plot synopsis, and I quote: "Holly Faye Lovell sure can sing. Everyone in Biscay, Mississippi, knows that. And when at fourteen she becomes the youngest student ever to win a scholarship to the prestigious Haverty School of Music, her dream of pursuing a singing career is on its way." End quote. But, of course, life is never that simple. Holly Faye had never been away from her dear mother, Wanda. So the night before catching the Greyhound to the Haverty School of Music, Wanda sits down w/ Holly Faye on the edge of her bed. They sit v. close to one another, in the way mothers & daughters do when a mother’s gift is about to be presented, from mother to daughter. Another excerpt follows, this one reconstructed from memory because I just now spilled coffee on the proofs:
"I have a gift for you," says Wanda. "A mother’s gift."
"Is it a special gift?" asks Holly Faye. "Something that will mean you’ll always be w/ me, even when yer still trapped in this hellhole & I’m shotgunning beers at the Haverty School of Music?"
"Yes."
Wanda places two objects in Holly Faye’s hands, and clasps them together. "I wore these on my wedding night," she says, her voice cracking.
The objects are squishy. At first Holly Faye is confused, but then she realizes what they are. "Oh mama!" she cries as she opens her hands. "Your breast implants!"
Plans are already under way for the sequel. Entitled A Daughter's Gift, it tells the story of how Wanda permitted Holly Faye to tramp about the world’s stages in a succession of skimpy costumes, and how Holly Faye in turn gave her mother the greatest gift of all: millions upon millions of dollars.
Next week: Christian symbolism and images of temptation & redemption in Sean "Puffy" Combs’s Are You My Lawyer?: A Child’s First Look At The U.S. Legal System. |
