by Patti Davis
Birch Lane Press 1991
Method of selection: Set a cow loose in the library. This was the book she was munching on when they shot her.
First sentence: I am the child of storytellers.
Worst sentence: …I’ve seen questions scurrying away, frightened by the light.
Worser sentence: Reaching my arm up at just the right moment, I could graze the edge of the moon; velvety and pale, it would leave a fine dust on my fingertips.
Word I hate in that sentence more than any: velvety
Do you know who Patti Davis is? I didn’t. She isn’t the Patti Davis named Patti Smith, which is what I thought at first. But it turns out I’ve seen her naked, which is probably why this is such a shitty book. She was too busy getting naked to learn to write. (But, I don’t know, female empowerment! Body positivity! Or something…)
Patti Davis is Ronald Reagan’s daughter, and notorious in the family for being not just a liberal, but also something of a libertine. She appeared in Playboy in 1994, and was pretty jacked, actually. I’m not sure why she thought she could write a novel, but people do crazy things on steroids.
The talking points on the front flap say this is a book about a woman “coming to terms”. This is the first warning that this is a shitty book. Unless she turns out to be coming to terms with her gigantic alien penis, or coming to terms with her insane desire to kill grandmothers and molest their corpses, you can be sure this book isn’t going to be very interesting.
The second is how every sentence is written out to be a big deal, such as:
My father waited until my mother’s shape no longer filled the doorway, until the sound of her footsteps had disappeared.
You know what works even better? “Mom left.”
Even better than that, PATTI, would have been to not write anything, and go to bed. I really don’t care that the lady’s parents are really Ronald and Nancy Reagan. They’re old and they’re dead. But I suppose they were still alive in 1991, sorta. It should be pointed out that this book is very, very out of print. So now it’s collectible!
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