Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood, Eileen Cook

When she was in eighth grade, Helen's best friend Lauren humiliated and betrayed her in order to start high school in the popular group. Helen moved away with her family for three years, but now she's back and she wants revenge.

I started reading this book a little bit on my moral high horse: Revenge is bad, forgiveness is good, and at first that interfered a little with my enjoyment of Lauren Wood. On the other hand, there was that little dark side of me that remembered being bullied in school and appreciated seeing the nasty kid getting her comeuppance, quite safely within the pages of a book.

I wasn't quite convinced by the realism of this book. Firstly I debated whether it was believable for a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl to still be obsessing over an event that happened when she was fourteen. And it is obsession - in her three years away from her old school she stalks Lauren through her Facebook (that girl seriously needs to sort out her privacy settings on her profile page!) She is unable to put this event behind her and move on. Then again, she was fourteen, a very vulnerable age at which anything that happens is the most important thing in the world, and Lauren had been her best friend for her whole life up to that point. I know from experience that it is harder to get over trust issues caused by a supposed friend than a known enemy, because you've let that person inside the walls that keep others out, making it a more devastating sabotage to your life.

But we are expected to believe that Helen has changed enough over three years to make her unrecogniseable, by losing some weight, cutting her hair and having a nose job, so that she can call herself by her middle name (Claire) and mother's maiden name. I didn't think so, but was quite willing to suspend my disbelief to watch the drama unfold. The plot was fairly predictable, and although Helen-Claire, the boy she liked, and Brenda, the friendly girl who wasn't part of the in-crowd and therefore had to be befriended in secret, were pretty well realised, Lauren could quite easily be Regina George from Mean Girls and her two closest friends, Bailey and Kyla (why are there always two cheerleader/popular girl minions?) looked in my mind like Brittany and Santana from Glee!

All in all, Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood was a trashy but enjoyable guilty-pleasure read. And it has a brilliant cover.

If you enjoyed this, you might like:

Pink - Lili Wilkinson
Just As Long As We're Together - Judy Blume
Film: Mean Girls

Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer, Jane Brocket

I certainly didn't think, when I started this blog, I would be writing about a cookery book, but that was before I found Jane Brocket's collection of treasures: Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer. The premise of this book is to recreate the sort of food that was eaten in the golden age of children's literature. I discovered it on the shelf at work, and its very title evoked a Famous Five adventure, with "lashings of ginger beer" (a phrase that is not actually known to appear in any of Enid Blyton's novels, but describes them perfectly.) I looked at this book, and thought, "Surely not? Surely it's just the children's literature obessive in me that makes me think it could be a book about Enid Blyton's love of describing food?" It had a lovely, old-fashioned cover, and looking closely at the illustration I thought it looked suspiciously like Milly-Molly-Mandy. Looking inside, I realised this wasn't just about Enid Blyton, but food in children's literature down the ages. Of course, the first thing I looked for was to see whether there were any recipes from Anne of Green Gables, in particular, for Raspberry Cordial. There it was: "Marilla Cuthbert's Zero-Alcohol Raspberry Cordial." Along the way, I saw recipes also from Swallows and Amazons and, of course, Enid Blyton.

At that point, I realised I was not being paid to stand around reading books all day, so put it back, but my appetite was whetted. I wanted that book so badly! It looked to me as though Ms Brocket had reached into my childhood and made an edible version of it - for the books I mention here were more than just stories I read and forgot. Sometimes, looking back, I have such nostalgia for them that it takes a bit of effort to separate what I did as a child, and what I read about. Out of curiosity, I made a list of the ten most influential childhood books and series, and checked Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer to see how many featured. I expected several. I did not expect them all. But not one of my top ten was excluded. Not one! "This," I thought to myself, "Is a woman who's read all the right books."

Anne of Green Gables, as I may have mentioned before, was the series that was most influential. I found in Anne a "kindred spirit," one who was like me in ways no one in the real world was. She was a dreamer, constantly making believe and telling stories in her mind, if not to others. I have already made the Anne recipes from Cherry Cake... two items of food and drink that involve similar mistakes on the behalf of Anne: the raspberry cordial that Anne meant to give Diana when she came to tea, and the layer cake that was unfortunately flavoured with anodyne liniment. I replaced the liniment with vanilla flavouring, however, not being quite sure what anodyne liniment was when it was at home. Googling the word implies that it is some kind of antiseptic or painkilling medicine - tasty(!) I was very happy with how that turned out. Ms Brocket's recipe was unashamedly going for recreating the childhood fancy of a "layer cake" rather than realism, which was probably nothing grander than a Victoria sandwich. The recipe here was for some kind of strawberries and cream gateau, and allowed one to double the proportions for four layers. Because we had slightly smaller tins than the recipe suggested, I made a three-layer cake, sandwiched together with strawberries and cream. I also used plain flour with baking-powder, rather than self-raising, because in Anne, the heroine at first blames the baking-powder for the disaster, to which Marilla returns, "Baking-powder, fiddlesticks!" I cannot think of the word "Baking-powder" without the word "fiddlesticks" on the end. I have to say, it was the best sponge cake I'd ever made, and it did indeed come out of the oven "as light and feathery as golden foam," thanks to mum's gluten-free flour.

Have also made raspberry cordial, a drink so sweet and indulgent that you (at least, I) wonder that it features - I tend to think of Marilla as keeping a kitchen full of plain, simple, wholesome food, whereas Raspberry Cordial (not to be mistaken for currant wine) is simply delicious! I unfortunately dropped about a quarter of the jug over the kitchen floor, and it looked rather as though I'd committed a murder.

This afternoon, I had a Swallows and Amazons themed baking session. This is the ideal holiday adventure series - not as outlandish as Enid Blyton's Famous Five series, but escapism nonetheless. The series captures a less paranoid time when children would be allowed to go sailing and camping without adult supervision, with a father who reasons that his children are "better drowned than duffers, if not duffers, won't drown." It too is a wonderful world of make-believe, with the town (I visited there when I was younger, but I can't remember what it was called,) renamed Rio, and the Old Man of Coniston (that I do remember) christened Kanchenjunga. The series is well-written because it doesn't talk down to the children, but reports the stories with the same juxtaposition of reality and fantasy as they would use, not having to explain what is "real" and what is make-believe, because we just know. The Swallows and the Amazons (and later the D's) also enjoy lashings of ginger beer, but they call it grog.

I made "Bunloaf," a nice, thick, rich fruit cake, and "Seedcake," which is a funny, old-fashioned recipe, a sponge cake with caraway seeds which I'd never used before but which have a peculiar flavour. Tasty, but a bit dry, so best eaten with plenty of grog to wash it down. Seedcake is a thing I associate with the Secret Seven as well, though I don't know whether it ever made an appearance in the Seven's clubroom. But I have clear memories of play-acting Secret Seven, and even that it was George who brought it as a meeting snack. That was before I was conscious that seed-cake really existed. It just sounded like something the Seven would eat.

The very first recipe I tried out, even before the liniment layer cake, was Debby's Jumbles from What Katy Did at School. They appear in perhaps the most evocative description of luscious food in children's literature; a chapter called "Christmas Boxes." The girls, Katy and Clover, stay at their boarding school over Christmas, but are not forgotten by their family, who send them enough cakes, fruit and sweets to feed them and all their friends. One of these cakes, which I had always wondered about, was the jumble, which was descibed as a round, crumbly cake. I had always thought of them as rather like doughnuts, but they turned out to be half-biscuitty, half-cakey, and could be flavoured with any number of things. This time I made them with lemon zest, but I wonder what they would be like with cinnamon. Hmm... perhaps next time...

In case you were wondering, the ten series to which I was referring were:

Anne of Green Gables,

What Katy Did

Little House on the Prairie (I am yet to make any of these recipes. Am tempted by cornbread but have not yet located cornmeal in Isle of Wight shops.)

Swallows and Amazons

The Chronicles of Narnia (somehow, I never really thought of these in the same category of "food" novels, probably because there was so much else going on. Sardines on toast, though, will always be associated with Mr Tumnus.)

Milly-Molly-Mandy

The Chalet School (When I went to stay with my Aunt in Germany a few years back, I was pleased to discover that kaffee und kuchen really does seem to exist as a meal - so much more honest than English afternoon tea - you skip the bread and butter and go straight onto the cake.)

The Famous Five

The Secret Seven

Malory Towers

These are the books that, one way or another, I seemed to live more than just read, whether it was by writing fill-in fan-fiction in my little blue folder (none of those stories ever got further than a page or two, but the intent was there) or played make-believe (on my own, generally. My school friends, at eight, were far too sophisticated to act out these books when I wanted to, so I had to play all seven members of the Secret Seven. Or I just read them over and over until I knew them backwards, and fictional incidents seem clearer than my own memories. And for me to find a book that has found all of these and extracted the edible parts of them - why, it's almost too good to be true. It's strange to think that anyone else could have written a cookbook that was so completely and entirely targetted at me.

Twilight and New Moon, Stephenie Meyer

This time a break from L. M. Montgomery, although there is still a link as on Meyer's official website she gives a list of recommended reading, which includes the complete Anne of Green Gables series.

I first encountered Twilight a couple of years ago and was drawn to it by its cover, by which a book should never be, but frequently is, judged. Frequently I picked it up, as its black and red and white appealed to my darker side, and read the blurb on the back:

About three things I was absolutely positive :
First, Edward was a vampire.
Second, there was a part of him-and I didn't know how dominant that part may be-that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

"Puh-lease!" I thought, and put the book back again. I had this strange sense of deja vu. Once, years ago, I read a book about a girl meeting a vampire after moving to a new place - possibly living or working in a hotel, but I can't be sure of that. I think, but couldn't swear to it, that she was drawn to him, dangerously - I wouldn't say falls in love. I don't think I ever finished tht book, and there are few books about which I can say that. I just remember an image from my head of standing by a lake or a pond and all is dark blue. At twilight, it must be. I don't remember what that book was called, but I was very unimpressed by it. I was convinced, at first, that Twilight was that book, rereleased with a shiny new cover. But when I checked its publication date, it was too recent.

Several times I looked at the back of the book, but never got further than that. A sequel, two, three made their way onto the shelves, and I started to become aware, as I worked in a bookshop, that the books were very popular. Reading on the internet I discovered a little more. Edward, for example, was what Terry Pratchett would call "A black ribboner" - a vampire who has sworn off human blood. But Pratchett's characters work as his is a comic universe. In general, I felt that a vampire who didn't drink blood wasn't a vampire at all. After all - girls fantasise about vampires. At least two of my best friends have crushes on Lestat from Interview With the Vampire. But their attraction is their danger, surely. A vampire romance - with a vampire who didn't drink human blood - just sounded particularly insipid. Like fantasy fulfilment that backfires.

General consensus seemed to be that Twilight was bad, but enjoyable, a guilty pleasure, (apart from those teenage girls who were determined that it was the "best b00k evaah n edward is soooo h0ttt!!111") Despite myself, I found myself wanting to read it just to see what all the fuss was about... except that being in four books, one being rather a monster volume, I wasn't sure I could put myself through it. Rather like High School Musical, but with more fangs and less singing. Plus, the titles of the second and third books: New Moon and Eclipse made me think of a certain Jaffa Cakes advert that used to be on the TV.

In the end it was the film that decided me. I haven't been to the cinema in months and I was getting withdrawal symptoms, but there was absolutely nothing on that I wanted to see. So when I heard Twilight would be out soon I decided that it was the least of many evils when pitted against James Bond, unfunny comedies and unromantic romances. Still, that left me with a dilemma. I am, primarily, a book-lover. Films come secondary. I rarely watch a film that wasn't at one point based on a book, and I don't like to see adaptations before I have read the original. But could I do that to myself?

I could, and I did. I even read the second and am about to start the third.

The story goes that Isabella Swan, henceforth known as Bella, moves to the small, wet town (sounds like it's been lifted from England, or at least the weather has been) of Forks, WA. She starts high school and meets Edward Cullen, who is a vampire. They fall in love at first sight, as you do, though Edward's idea of love at first sight is like me falling in love with a box of Lindt Lindor at first sight. It takes all his effort not to swoop on her, and subsequently he acts as though he hates her.

Now, there's no mystery about Edward. He's a vampire, that is obvious to anyone who's read the blurb on the back, or seen the trailer for the film. It is Bella who is the enigma. I read her as rather an unreliable narrator. She tells us that she is plain, gawky and a misfit, but she has every boy she meets falling at her feet. Even Edward, though he tries to hide it. Also, in the very first book she shows traits of resembling a vampire. She is pale skinned. She is incredibly sensitive to the smell of blood. There is something about her that stops Edward, who has the ability to read minds, from reading hers. And, as before mentioned, he falls head over heels for her on first sight.

At the end of the first book, she is bitten by a vampire, but Edward saves her from turning into one. Or so it appears. In the second, Bella is often described as feeling very cold when no one else is. Now, later in the series, I will probably find that Mrs Meyer attributes this to the vampire bite, perhaps say that it had a slower effect on her but that at that moment she began to turn. However, the signs were there very early on. There is something that Bella is not telling us.

The love story, I'm sorry, does not convince me. It reads more like infatuation to me. Bella's attracted to Edward - we are told over and over that he is more beautiful than is humanly possible, like a Greek god, with perfect features and marble skin. I'm not sure that the "marble skin" image is as attractive as it is supposed to be. Not on a man. It makes me think of Othello's description of Desdemona:

"Yet I’ll not shed her blood

Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow

And smooth as monumental alabaster."

Now, I've read that Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward in the film, is getting absolutely mobbed and rather scared by all the teenage fangirls who have fallen in love with Edward. Or rather, infatuation. I suppose it's the tortured hero idea, but to me he is irritable, temperamental and changeable. "Ah," you might say, "That is because he loves Bella and wants what is best for her, but wants to be with her, and the two needs are not compatable." That's true, that's accurate... but... there is something flat about their relationship. Trying to pinpoint what it is that doesn't quite work, but when I think I've got it I remember something that contradicts it. I think, what it is, is that Bella seems infatuated with how Edward looks and the exoticism of him being a vampire, but I don't see much of what makes her love him. She is obsessed with him, certainly, to an unhealthy degree, to the point of abandoning interest in everything else.

Even more unhealthily, Bella demands again and again that she wants to be a vampire too, and Edward refuses, again and again, to bite her. Bella shows a shockingly selfish disregard for her humanity, ignores Edward's telling her that immortality is not all fun and games. She seems like she's got this pretty, daydreaming, unrealistic idea that she clings to about being a vampire, without giving any thought to the torture the Cullens (especially Edward) suffer as a result of their lifestyle. She also pays no thought to how her parents will react. In short, she is a heedless teenager who lives in a world of her own. The sad thing is, I'm sure she will get her wish before the end of the series. I wonder whether she will live to regret it. I think of that awful journalist at the end of Interview who after Louis has told this story about how terrible it is to be a vampire, thinks, "Oh, go on, it can't be that bad, make me a vampire and I'll do a better job of it than you did." To which Louis thinks, "Have you not listened to a word I said?" Bella, too, thinks she knows better than those who know what they're talking about because they've lived the undead "life."

Bella and Edward's relationship all happens so quickly I don't quite believe it. And he seems to love her as though she were a box of Lindt Lindor that he knows he mustn't eat. It seems to be her blood he loves more than anything else, but he resists going in for the swoop. At the same time, though he's always saying he's dangerous, I'm not sure I quite believe it. There are moments when you see it, but usually not.

In the sequel, New Moon, Bella gives herself a paper-cut in the presence of Edward and his family, after which Edward jumps at her to protect her from his brother Jasper, who struggles with the black ribboners' non-human diet. That causes her to injure herself more seriously by, if I got this right, falling onto a load of glass at the dinner table. Edward and the Cullens leave Forks to protect Bella, which causes her to sink into a more severe case of moping than I gave a main character after killing off her fiancé - and I thought I was overdoing it.

After this, the Cullens also disappear from the story for about, oh, the middle third or half of the book, and at this point, despite Bella's moping, the story becomes more interesting (ie there is more story and less description of Edward's marble statue beauty. Bella spends a lot of time with her friend Jacob, and this relationship with the blurred edges of whether they should count count themselves boyfriend and girlfriend or just friends is one of the more realistic relationships in the book. Jacob, too, is a more rounded character than Edward.

Not that this section of the book will escape analysis or criticism. Jacob becomes worried about his friends, who seem to be falling under the spell of one Sam Uley, looking as though they are being drawn into a cult and acting strangely. Then Jacob is next. Bella is exceedingly thick at this point. For someone who dated a vampire for six months or so, she takes a long time to realise that Jacob is a werewolf, even though, at the same time he told her the old Quileute legends about vampires which led her to realise the truth about Edward, he told her that he was supposedly descended from werewolves.

Second issue - this being a writing criticism - when it finally does click with Bella, it is in a dream where she sees him turning into a wolf. This is a weak narrative device - though one I have been guilty of myself as a teenager. It must be another clue to Bella being an undiagnosed vampire, as the vampires all have supernatural skills. Edward's sister Alice can see the future. Perhaps Bella too has this ability.

Criticism 3: Werewolves vs. vampires. Either/or, please. Both in a fantasy set in the real world is too much - too many mythical creatures running around. And the two species being at war makes me think "Underworld" and Montagues and Capulets. (Having said that, there are a lot of Romeo and Juliet references in this book.)

The last part of the book shows Bella jetting off to Italy, as you do, to stop Edward committing suicide by angering the Volturi, or Vampire royal family, into killing him (as suicide for the undead is a bit difficult.) For a while it stops being fantasy in high school and changes genre to epic fantasy. I think, overall, I prefer the local, small-town stories. I think I always do. I'm rather a home-girl at heart, and when reading - or writing - a book, I like it to be set mostly near to home. When you change settings you change the tone of the book, and despite the corniness of the Twilight books, I do have to admit to enjoying the local, high-school, small-town setting of them. Though some of the characters are very two-dimensional, I like the human (and once-human and part-human) stories, in a guilty pleasure sort of way. I just have to ignore the swooning and the moping and the constant descriptions of Edward's unearthly beauty.

In conclusion, the Twilight series so far is bad, really bad, and yet... fun. I certainly will be reading on.

Watch this space for reviews of the other books, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.