Wednesday, March 10, 2010

A lot to answer for

I got very excited in New York over Christmas. There were many reasons for the excitement, but the one that made me stop in my tracks and walk a few steps back to check out a poster on a billboard was the discovery that the writers of The Nanny Diaries have finally gotten around to producing a sequel. This may be news to some - those in the UK, certainly, where it's not destined to land on shelves for another month or so - but to quite a few, it will be no shock. It was out in New York, it was out in Australia, and it made the journey back from Melbourne safely stowed in L's luggage until it was pounced on by me and read in a flash.

It's taken me a little while to digest what I read there. The book was lacking several things, not least of which was the fantastic alliteration of the Harvard Hottie - now he has a name, somewhat disappointingly, and is extremely absent for a large chunk of the book. The years have rolled by faster in Nanny's New York than in the real world, though, and suddenly Nanny is jaded, nostalgic and approaching an early mid-life crisis.

Gone also is the biting but disturbing critique of the wealthy society families. It's not nearly as surprising now to discover the truth behind something Cherry told Ponyboy in The Outsiders a few decades ago: It's rough all over. We've been presented with the dilemma of the rich child who has everything they want except the love and attention of their parents often enough to have become desensitised to it. And if we wanted to know what happens when the children grow up and reach high school, well, we've had Gossip Girl to instruct us on the difficulties of their lives. The parties, the clothes, the dash to spend cash - it's all too familiar.

The difference is that Kraus and Mclaughlin set their novel just as it was all revealed as a sham. They hint at the outcome before the story even begins, with a quote about Bernie Madoff's relationship with his sons. The makings of something a little more serious than the usual chick lit romp are already in place - even if they just re-use the framework from The Nanny Diaries. But somehow, it all falls flat.

Maybe it was me. I've read a whole lot more books with pink covers featuring cartoons of impossibly thin but beautifully dressed girls. I've seen Gossip Girl, and the episodes focusing on what happens when one of the rich bastards gets caught out. But whatever it is, somehow, Nanny just comes across as a little spineless and whiny as she hangs out with her former school mates, swans around town getting paid and enormous amount of cash to do very little, it seems, and fails to stand up for those who deserve it. Nanny, the great defender of the unloved, the champion of the children, has gotten all growed up and lost something in her years living abroad with her world-saving husband.

Still, for any who haven't read it yet, don't take my word for it. Read the follow up to the book that is credited with lifting the lid on Upper East Side Manhattan. Take a peek into the sort of lifestyle we can only dream about. Then follow it up with lashings of Gossip Girl; because really, who doesn't wish that they at least had the option to reject that lifestyle?

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Beware Pagans...

At last there is light. So much so that I’m tempted to put my sunglasses on when I’m at my desk for certain times of day. I’m at risk of being blinded. It has to be a health and safety issue. But I don’t really mind. Because, as long as I don’t venture outside, I can bask in the sun, stretching out my feet like a cat, and pretend that it’s almost summer, and I’m almost warm.

It looks like I’m not the only one with this kind of thinking. I’ve seen a few people tricked into wearing shorts, flippy skirts, bare legs and sandals. There’s a more sensible man leaning against a wall outside. It’s the end wall of a terrace, and he stand beneath a wall-mounted street light, head raised to the sun and looking like he’s about to indulge in a pagan ritual. He’s smart enough to do it whilst wearing a sheepskin jacket with a heavy beard to keep his face warm. Although now I think about it, judging by the amount of laundry he’s just picked up from the laundromat in his supermarket trolley, I’m wondering if that’s as much because he didn’t have enough clean clothes as anything else.

I do feel that I should brave the cold and offer him a warning though. The last man I saw leaning against that wall was facing the other way and searching for relief from things other than the cold. If the trickle he left running from the wall to the gutter was anything to go by, he wasn’t worshipping the sun. South London: workplace, temple and toilet, all rolled into one handy location. How convenient.