Friday, April 20, 2007

King of Cliched Plot Twists

I really need to exercise my new-found freedom to stop reading books. For whatever reason, I made it to the final page of The King of Colored Town, by Darryl Wimberley. If this book is not made into a movie, shown on Hallmark, Lifetime, Oxygen, or some other sappy channel with a predominantly pink webpage, I will be shocked.

Wimberley, a screenwriter, takes the reader on an overwrought, treacly journey where every cliche from every other book about America's segregated past is visible forty pages before it arrives: the poor young Black girl who overcomes incredible odds, the troubled young Black man who loves her but shares a terrible secret with our heroine, the hard-working teachers who help her, the spoiled rich white kids who hate her, etc., etc. Even the inevitable rape scene, at the hands of malicious men who think she is "uppity," not only occurs exactly where you would expect it to happen, but it takes a physical toll on the main character that, in what I am sure the author meant to be irony, robs the main character of her ability to take advantage of the scholarship you knew she would be offered.

This is a lazy, predictable book that pushes well past the boundaries of reality in an attempt to tell a story that I am sure was meant to be heart-warming and/or life affirming, but just comes off to me as a desperate attempt to carve out some chick lit dollars, both in books and eventually on screen. Ugh. D-

1 comment:

Jenny said...

I don't read books like that. Living in the middle of the CRM is enough. It's in the paper every day. The issue, not rapes, etc.