Learn by Their Mistakes: Blueprints for Building Better Girls

I'm making my first New Year's resolution for 2012: I will not read a book published in 2012 based on a review from the New York Times magazine. Two times I did such a thing in 2011, for the Julian Barnes Man Booker award novel and now for Elissa Schappell's Blueprints for Building Better Girls, I have been on the whole disappointed ... although I do find Barnes' theme butting into my mind as I read other books. I have no such qualms about Schappell's stories recurring in my mind.

This is a small collection of eight short stories about girls behaving badly, seemingly without recourse or comeuppance. The two longest ones are the ones that are the most dark and for that dire portrayal of girls way in over their heads the are tales of morality, by the lack thereof. It struck me when I finished that with its lipstick red cover with a black cherry on it (a cherry that also looks somewhat like a bomb) that Schappell wanted the book to be used in high school advanced English classes as yet another one of those contemporary stories of dysfunctional families and children who act out badly. I can just hear the teacher saying, "now class, would you be friends in college with Bender?" Or "is Jane just a girl torn between two men or just a tease?"

In addition to these two dark tales of teenage wild children, Schappell writes about bored mothers and empty marriages, and nothing about lustful love. Her only other book, which was nominated for the PEN Faulkner, is titled Use Me, and here I thought I might find a lusty book for December's chilly nights. Nah, the summary sounds again to be about two self-obsessed women. Between Schappell and Barnes, one might come to think that there no longer is any love between the sexes.

Also upon turning the last page, I thanked my lucky stars that I have sons and decided not to mention this collection in Tuesday night's upcoming book club meeting lest those poor women with daughters will lose their minds with worry.