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Loading... Treasure Island!!! (edition 2011)by Sara LevineA hilarious story about a woman who decides to base her life on Treasure Island, specifically what she sees as its 4 core values: BOLDNESS, RESOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE and HORN-BLOWING. The problems arise when her adherence to these goals is either somewhat twisted or outright non-existent: her BOLDNESS is typically a mask for selfishness and occasionally cruelty, her RESOLVE is stubbornness at best and at worst she just folds immediately, her INDEPENDENCE never really materializes as she ping pongs between parasitic relationships with her employer, her boyfriend, her parents, and a misguided attempt to dupe a former classmate to crash in her spare bedroom, and there fails to materialize an epic scene of HORN-BLOWING glory. Never-the-less, the farcical events play out in a funny and satisfying way, and ends with our heroine attempting her first real independent adventure (driving down the block to the hospital complete with a hand-drawn map to guide her famously terrible sense of direction). It’s not about the self-absorbed young woman narrator who takes Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island as her life manual. It’s an audacious satire about self-improvement jammed with wacky black humor held at a whirring pitch by a talented young writer named Sara Levine. Dr. Klug nodded. “You do seem anxious. You shredded your gown.” “Well, it takes an awful lot of energy to give birth to oneself. It’s not as though you do one bold thing and then you are bold. The thing about adventure is that you have to keep on doing it, day in and day out. I don’t know, can it ever be definitively accomplished? I hardly rest, I hardly can!” I'm torn with this one. I don't think it is necessary for a protagonist to be likeable at all times; how boring would that be? Generally, the more broken the character the more I love them. However, there is usually something about the character to keep you hanging on- maybe a little charisma or remorse or... I don't know... a glimpse of humanity! There isn't much with this character...the parrot mimicking her tears is one time, maybe, when we see a little depth, but that's about it. The book is well written, though; the author certainly has a flair for language, so 2 stars for that and an extra star for the excellently drawn characters of Patty and her girlfriend, who see right through the narrator's shenanigans. What started out as a book I was ready to rate 4 stars half way through became a book that I generously gave 2. The dark humor in the book suddenly took a turn to the totally unfunny and the annoying main character made me want to hurl the book across the room and hope something dark and unfunny happened to her! I read this after hearing about it in Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist. I absolutely LOVED this book. It's hilarious but simultaneously so clearly captures this element of being lost in your 20s. The use of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island to anchor this novel is an inspired choice. Clearly my life needs more horn-blowing! Also, I was reading this on my commute and someone on the train mistook it for the original Treasure Island, and went on and on about how much he'd loved that book as a teenage boy, which was so appropriate and added a nice meta level of hilarity in my life. The second book I read this year with an exclamation mark in the title (and this one has three of them, which is three times as exciting as Swamplandia!), also one of the better books I've read this year--the best not to make any yearend best books lists (possibly because of its December publication date). Treasure Island!!! is told in the first person by a narrator who is hilarious, quirky and as self-centered as she is completely unselfaware. She is a recent college graduate stuck in a series of dead end jobs, most recently working part-time in a "pet library" where people can rent pets for a few days at a time. The book begins with her discovery of the book Treasure Island and the story is about her increasing obsession with modeling her life after the hero, Jim Hawkins. She reads Treasure Island over and over again the exclusion of everything else. She believes she can divine key life lessons and values from it that she puts on index cards and uses as a model for her own life, and she even goes so far as to buy a parrot. She finds so many layers to Treasure Island but hilariously seems to be blissfully unaware that it is a pirate story and to not know many of the basic aspects of what it is actually about. Treasure Island!!! follows the standard downward spiral of an addiction story, but does it with over-the-top zaniness, wit, charm, and insight unintentionally shed on the people around her and herself. Every page sparkled and it was hard to put it down until reading to the very end. Imagine that you have decided to take Stevenson's [Treasure Island] as your self-help book. Wait - imagine that you are a sociopathically un-self-aware 20-something, and you've decided to take [Treasure Island] as your self-help book. You work out that the book's Core Values are BOLDNESS, RESOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE and HORN-BLOWING, and you try and put them into practice in your daily life. When our unnamed narrator attempts this, she rapidly brings chaos into her own life and the lives of those around her. This part of the book was hilarious - I laughed out loud every couple of pages, as her behaviour became bigger and wilder. But at some point the reader notices the clues scattered through the book, suggesting what she might have been like before she adopted this boldness. If there was a problem with this book, it was the disconnect between the two sides of her personality. She's just so good at being a larger-than-life, monstrous character - it's hard to see how she transformed from someone so different. Worse, I can understand why she preferred the new persona, destructive and heedless of others as it was. But the twists in the book mean that I think next time I read it I will see more in it; and I am sure I will read it again. Sometimes I consider BOLDNESS a quality one has or does not have; other times I think of BOLDNESS as a quality one chooses to cultivate or to let wither on the vine. A short, very funny read. Well worth it for both the humor and for the message about obsession with a particular text (or show or whatever). It makes you think, when you're a person like me. Lots more at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-q4 I found myself laughing at parts and rubbed the wrong way at parts. I understand that the protagonist is meant to be obnoxious in a variety of ways, but sometimes I was thinking to myself "alright alright, we get it" I did still want to know what happened though, so wanting to finish it counts for something. Funny, twisted novella with an utterly unsympathetic, narcissistic narrator. I sort of love this kind of thing from girlwriters, because it screws with the concept of chicklit in a completely subversive way. The fact that I've read Treasure Island outloud to the boy in the last 12 months didn't hurt, either. In Levine's first novel, an unnamed 25-year-old heroine, ambivalent about her boyfriend and unhappy in her job at the Pet Library (lending furry or finned companionship in lieu of books) adopts Treasure Island as a roadmap for life. Taking the book's "Core Values" of "boldness, resolution, independence, horn-blowing" to heart, she stops cleaning up after the pets, uses her boss's life-savings to acquire a parrot, and generally makes a huge pill of herself to everyone around her. Summary BPL The three exclamation marks caught my eye. Trolling the YA section of my local library, I hoped to find a story that was fresh, narrated with style and clear of the paranormal realm. I am a reader with high expectations...! Sara Levine did not disappoint. The nameless 20-something protagonist (all of us who inflict character-building quests on family and friends!) is egregiously manipulative,obnoxiously narcissistic and entirely entertaining! She is the pirate model for the 2010s: she lives off the gold ($) of acquaintances, boyfriends and failing all else, Mom and Dad. Judging from other reviews, I assume many readers have been repulsed by this heroine's efforts to adopt RL Stevenson's "core values" whereas I enjoyed the tale as delightfully ironic and here and there close to the bone of truth. It's a particularly apt read for New Year's (today!), a time one is prodded to formulate resolutions to improve, mend, renew one's life. One of my favourite characters was Richard the parrot----can't have a modern day pirate yarn without one! His dialogue, usually laugh-out-loud tag lines from TV commercials, contrasted delightfully with our main character's hatred of him: "Steer the boat, girlfriend." Richard calls out, or "It's big, it's hot, it's back!"| It would be unfortunate if potential readers were discouraged by the "young adult" label. (I just thought! Perhaps that is ironic too? Pointing the novel to the demographic Ms Levine jokingly pins to the page?!) I recommend it to fans--regardless of age--of sharp, witty, farcical social commentary. 8 out of 10!!! Looking forward to the next one! |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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An obsession with RL Stevenson turns crazy, the narrator is completely selfish and can only think about herself.
Skip the book, absolute waste of time ( )