September’s book club book was Sloane Crosley’s I was told there’d be cake. I was so excited because I had been wanting to read this book forever. The title was witty, she was compared to David Sedaris and it was on the NY Times bestseller list. What more is there to want?
How about a book that doesn’t infuriate you? When I got to book club last night, the first thing I said was that I wanted to strangle Sloane Crosley. She took a perfectly good idea, fantastic title, somewhat decent essay topics and completely ruined it all. Her writing was wordy, repetitive and lacked focus. She went on and on and on and on about the most mundane things. Perhaps if she would have written more concisely, the book would have been more witty or made sense or something.
And, all she did was bitch and complain. She bitched up a storm about an old friend who called to ask her to be in her wedding…which turned into a stint as a maid of honor. The way she told it and the many ways obvious to anyone with a brain that she could have gotten out of the situation or made it better for herself left me without any sympathy whatsoever for her.
The chapter about her really pathetic and unsuccessful attempts to have a one night stand was also drawn out way too long and unbelievable. As Gaby put it, she could have had “five one night stands a night with five different extremely hot guys” when she lived in NYC. So, what is this Sloane person’s problem?
From reading this book – and I admit I skimmed the last few chapters b/c I was so sick of her non-stories – it’s because she’s a bitch and not a nice person…and she prides herself off of that. She likes the fact that she has no girlfriends. She treats the friends she does have like crap–and admits it!
What I can’t understand though is how she has become a NY Times best-selling author. She doesn’t belong in the same paragraph as David Sedaris. I really want to ask all of the people who have rave reviews printed inside the paperback version – were you delusional or high when you read this book? It sucks. And it wasn’t even a well written shitty book.
The good news is that if Sloane Crosley can be a “successful” published author, it’s looking pretty good for the rest of us.
