November 14, 2005

Review: Naked Brunch by Sparkle Hayter

The Also by Sparkle Hayter page near the front of Bandit Queen Boogie informed me that there was one book by the author which I had yet to read. Yesterday I was quite pleased to find the cleverly named and as-yet-unread-by-yours-truly Naked Brunch on the shelf at the Central Library. And today, the review.

I have often said "Free makes everything better." Free in this case, made Naked Brunch good, even though I'd expected better. If I had shelled out some of my hard-earned cash money for this novel, I might be less inclined to focus on the good and more inclined to point out how this book did not deliver the one thing I have come to expect from Sparkle Hayter without fail: the Funny.

Hayter's apparent foray into the muddied and over-crowded waters of the paranormal chicklit sub-sub genre delivers the wacky characters, witty writing, breakneck pacing and deliciously twisty plots that have made all of her other books so memorable. Unfortunately, Naked Brunch did not induce the standard 3-5 gigglefests that usually prompt my husband to look up from his book of serious, useful nonfiction and ask me what is so funny.

Naked Brunch is the story of mild-mannered, downtrodden New York legal secretary, Annie Engle. Like many a mild mannered, downtrodden New York chick-lit heroine, Annie has been bullied by her boss, taken for granted by her "friends," and dumped by the boyfriend she helped put through legal school in favor of a richer, prettier, blonder woman. So far, so familiar.

But don't get discouraged. Things get unfamiliar pretty fast in this book, and though there is a strong romantic thread and a mostly happy ending, any book that has the heroine vomit up a human eyeball midway through can never, truly, be chick-lit. In addition to the lack of a fetish for designer shoes, the other things that makes Annie different from her chick-lit cousins are the recurring dreams Annie has that she is a wolf running through a snowy field.

When the vegetarian Annie wakes one morning to find her window broken in, blood on her face, and raw meat lodged between her teeth she begins to suspect that her full-moon dream was no dream at all. An evil executive from the megalithic corporation for which Annie works has been found dead and half eaten in front of a restaurant called "Carnivore" in the Meatpacking district.
The "Mad Dog Murders" make front page news, everyone from a dim-bulb aging reporter, to a psychotic psychiatrist specializing in Lycanthrpopic Metamorphic Disorder, to a rogue werewolf, to the police and the Mayor's special task force are on Annie's trail.

Hayter handles the supernatural element of her story superbly. Some authors engage in long, boring discussions of rules for their supernatural elements, while others confuse the reader by providing no structure at all. Hayter gives you just enough information to keep you from getting confused, and encourages a healthy suspension of disbelief by keeping the plot moving swiftly from beat to beat and the narrative bounding from one crazy character to the next.

Hayter also does an excellent job sketching her wide, colorful cast of secondary characters quickly and efficiently. They really leap off the page, and I never once got any of them confused. Perhaps she did the job too well, though, because by the middle of the book I found myself far more interested the B plot concerning comically clueless anchorman Sam Deverell's attempts at "reporting" on the Mad Dog Murders than I was in the characters that actually committed those murders.

The C plot, which concerned a gossip columnist and Annie's shallow friends' attempts to become famous within a year, was less compelling and highly predictable. Still, as she has in other books, Hayter seamlessly wove the disparate strands of story together for a mostly satisfying, if somewhat predictable conclusion.

I feel a little bad saying that I didn't like this book as much as other books by Hayter. She set a high bar for herself, and deviated from what I wanted and expected when I went in search of the book. I have a feeling that if anyone else had written this book, I'd be raving about it instead of damning it with faint praise. Here are the facts: I devoured it in about 3.5 hours, and while it didn't have the requisite number of gigglefest moments, it was still fast, witty, amusing and well-written.

Posted by sk :: 11/14/2005 :: 0 comments

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