When you
read a book, your main focus is typically on the story with the characters
being pieces in this grand plot puzzle. Just like when watching a movie, you
never think about the life that goes on behind the scenes with the actors,
directors, casting crew, and all. Well, this book does!
Eloise is a
fictional character (actor) awaiting her casting call in a story. While others
are getting cast as wizards, spies, nymphs, vampires, Martians, cowboys, and
whatnots in all sorts of novels, Eloise continually sits on the sidelines,
taking useless classes on character development and generally what authors
(directors) are looking for, feeling more and more discouraged. At her age, the
chances of getting cast are only getting slimmer. If she doesn't get called
soon, she will be a teacher ("Those who can't do, teach!") and fade
away, forgotten.
I was
intrigued by this unconventional story. It's a behind-the-manuscript
documentation, detailing the tasks and efforts in the making of a novel. I
liked it!
Right off the bat, you
root for Eloise and hope she gets a part. Then she does get a part--a part as a
recorder, a part of the stage crew. "Now she wasn’t teaching people who were going to go off and
have lives. She was watching people who already had lives in progress."
(22) Kind of a bummer, especially knowing that most of your co-workers are
"post-stories" (people that have been in stories and are now working
behind-the-scenes.) Of course, one of which is a former and starred in an
erotic romance novel. Nice! Barnaby is a
charismatic British stallion that sees something in Eloise, who flushes whenever
he's around.
"We are all tools authors use to perfect their art.
They make us wait around for months, years, picking us up, killing us off all
for the purpose of getting their
story told. And
we have to put up with it because our entire existence is based on them giving
us a story. We have no free will. Either you give yourself over and let those
people do whatever the hell they want to do to you, or you’re stuck in that
damn School left to fade away. If they want to break us, bash our heads in,
slowly flay us alive, we just have to take it. It’s like .. . I don’t know.
Mind rape. Life
rape.” (34)
But Eloise didn't want to be "just another character sacrificed in the name of the plot."
(53) Then, suddenly, she accidentally finds herself in a story--a strange,
medieval-fantasy hybrid story. At this point, we cross back and forth between
the story and the story within the story, all spliced with dialogue and a
fleeting narrative.
Frankly, I wasn't so interested in the story Eloise found
herself in. It sounded like she was in a world where King Arthur meets Robin
Hood or Harry Potter or something. Regardless, I did want to know how it would
turn out for her. Could she be trapped? And would it be the absolute worst
thing if she were to stay? Did she break some sort of cosmic rule by falling into
a story? I actually thought that Eloise was going to take initiative and write
her own story.
It's funny because Eloise being trapped in the story made me
think of those Bugs Bunny episodes, ones that had him arguing with the
cartoonist over silly things like forgetting to draw his ears. In this case,
Eloise would converse with the author, pleading for assistance. I thought that
was kind of weird and the interplay would be confusing at times.
I was more fascinated by the concept and how it all began
rather than the quandary, which is where the story started losing me. From that
point on, I was mainly just muddling through it. And even though I didn't
really know how Eloise ended up where she did or why Barnaby needed to go
through the endless tedium of going through proper channels and procedures, I
still kind of wondered how this would end.
My rating: 3.5 stars
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