Paperback Reader

Nada. Until I read Fire Song. A heroine named Kassia. How could I not love Coulter? Granted, this is one of the books that Coulter critics cite as evidence of bad romance writing. I can understand, what with the hero raping the heroine and whatnot. No excuse for that.

This review is not about Fire Song. It is about a new novel called Born To Be Wild, or, as I like to think of it, the last book by Catherine Coulter I will pay good money for.

As is my practice, I will begin with a brief encapsulation of the plot. Mary Lisa Beverly is a three-time Daytime Emmy winner for her role on the soap opera “Born to be Wild”. One day, as she is walking home from the Malibu library to her house in the Malibu Colony, a car nearly runs her over. Based on the word of an eyewitness, everyone is convinced that it was a deliberate attempt on Mary Lisa’s life and she is being hunted by a stalker.

Thus, Mary Lisa, after rallying her spirits and finishing her week’s shoot (good work ethic), returns home to her parents’ for a weekend’s R&R (odd because, except for her father, her family is just plain awful and if I were trying to make myself feel better, I’d go to a spa). She lands in the middle of the first murder committed in her small Oregon hamlet in like forever. Also, she finds herself attracted to the town’s district attorney – her younger sister’s ex – and, inexplicably, the sheriff whom she last saw when he tossed her in jail. The jail thing happened because she was getting back at her ex for sleeping with her older sister.

She goes back to LA. The sheriff follows her. A bunch of stuff, mostly pointless and I forget it, happens. An attempt on Mary Lisa’s life is made. More pointless stuff. The murder back home pops back into the story. Uh, more stuff. Karate lessons. The end.

Yeah, the plot was like a soap opera. And, no, dear friends, this was not broken up by hot sex or anything.

Mary Lisa, in addition to being a fantastic actress, is just about the nicest person you’d ever meet. Think candy canes without the minty bite. Everyone just loves her; people flock to her, her home is party central, what with its proximity to the beach and all. Sure, her mother’s a bitch and so are her sisters. But they’re just plain awful, you know? I mean, one sister stole Mary Lisa’s fiancé from her. The other sister is a bitter-mouthed waste of time. They simply have no motivation or redeeming qualities.

Jack, the small town sheriff who assumes the role of hero in the novel (after Mary Lisa dumps the DA – with whom she has actual chemistry, at least on paper – because her cranky younger sister still has the hots for him), is your basic small town sheriff recovering from a lousy marriage. Aren’t they all, really? He discovers that Mary Lisa is not the shallow child he believed. It’s all gonna be fine. Which is great because he spends as much time in LA as he does working the biggest case to hit his sleepy hamlet in like forever.

Oh, wait. Jack is known to his best friend, John, as “Goon Leader”. John, the aforementioned district attorney, is nicknamed “Pitty Pat”. Despite several promises to explain these nicknames – and you have to admit you’re curious – nothing is forthcoming. Pity. It surely would have been one of the more interesting aspects of the book.

In addition to Mary Lisa’s mother and sisters, she has a perfectly lovely, though incapable of realizing that spark plug maintenance is important in expensive cars (Mary Lisa, however, is a whiz-bang mechanic), father. She has BFFs, both of whom naturally find love (or the promise of love) over the course of the novel. She has more friends than I can recall. She has many, many co-workers, only one of whom expresses rather weak-kneed jealousy. These characters, for the most part, are given big introductions before they fade into the background. If or when they make a return to the story, I did a lot of “Huh”-ing, trying to remember who was who.

I think Coulter forgot, too. She was doing a lot of explication via dialogue (“You remember, Mary Lisa, that he’s the guy whose birthday party you attended yesterday?”) and explication via narrative (see previous example, take out quote marks). This made for a lot of confusing point-of-view switches – who, what? – but also made the book longer in ways I’d rather not consider at this moment.

The plot, as mentioned, revolves around trying to figure out who is trying to kill and/or stalk Mary Lisa. Take my word for it, this is not a compelling plot, unless you think that scenes where Mary Lisa and her friends decide they’re going to play detective are compelling. They’re not. The law enforcement professionals involved in these scenes should have their badges yanked. Generally, the major action involves a lot of driving and dramatic moments that fizzle within words. While Coulter gamely tries to play them off as red herrings, the truth of the matter is that not a single moment in the novel actually moves this plotline forward.

You have to admit that takes some doing.

Luckily, there’s a sub-mystery: who committed murder in bucolic Goddard Bay, Oregon. Okay, setting aside the fact that the actual murder serves no purpose in the novel other than to, hmm, okay, I have it. The purpose of this murder is to lead to another murder which leads to a suicide with leads to a deux ex machina revelation that the reason Mary Lisa’s mother hates her is because Mary Lisa’s father had an affair while said mother was pregnant with said daughter.

The big ending, as I like to think of it, was, well, an ending. I found myself reading as if the book were a car crash – I slowed down the closer I got to impact (the end). As I crept past the climax, I was disappointed. Is that all there was? What, I ask you, was this book about?

The back cover copy (I know, I know) tries to convince me that there is humor and whatnot in this book. I was not amused and I so wanted to be amused. Because I am the generous sort, I tried to pretend that Coulter was writing all of this as a parody of soap operas, but that’s not the case. It’s just not.

How do I know? Ah, there’s a sort of third sub-plot thing going on. As if the mysteries in Mary Lisa’s life aren’t enough, we are treated to scenes from her soap opera as her character discovers, in fine soap opera tradition, the truth about her father. He lives! And so on.

Ideally, this sort of story-within-a-story should somehow connect or parallel or mirror or contrast or something with the main story. It doesn’t. I mean, I wracked my brain for days trying to force connections where none existed. I wanted this so badly. I failed.

I should have known when soap opera factoids appeared at the beginning of random chapters. No rhyme, no reason, as far as I can. Old factoids, too. Unless maybe there haven’t been any decent soap opera factoids in the past couple of decades? I probably need to get out more.

Which reminds me. Based on my rather imperfect math, Mary Lisa’s age is somewhere in the 26 – 32 range (I’m sure I was told the correct age, but I forget). Now tell me, does anyone in this age range sing “Rocky Mountain High” with anything less than sarcastic irony? Does anyone in this age range dream about John Lennon? I get that some people listen to oldies, but John Denver?

I realize that fiction should be fantastic, and it certainly doesn’t have to mirror real life. But it says a lot about a novel when the most believable aspect of the story is an actor who has come out of seemingly nowhere, landed her first role on a soap opera, and has won three Emmys, one for each year she’s been on the show. Beyond this, nothing made sense.

Where to start? Okay, we’ve covered the part where, based rather scant evidence, everyone decides that Mary Lisa is being stalked. We’ve covered the Emmy thing. We’ve covered the fact that everyone and their dog (it’s in the story, trust me) loves Mary Lisa. Have I mentioned that she’s somehow bought a house in the Malibu Colony…on a third year soap star’s salary? Maybe this is a case where I have too much information.

On so many levels, Coulter makes her setting unbelievable. It’s the little things, like the fact that Mary Lisa didn’t learn to call the Pacific Coast Highway “PCH” until she moved to the Colony. Uh, right. It’s PCH. Only aliens call it by its proper name; that will be the clue that we’ve been invaded by beings from other planets.

Also, I want to make it clear that nobody -- not even me -- can make the drive from Lost Hills to Burbank in five minutes. And this after Mary Lisa somehow (and if Coulter could explain it, she would solve many major traffic problems in the greater Los Angeles area) made a round-trip from Santa Monica to Lost Hills to Venice. In an hour.

Can’t be done. Shouldn’t be attempted. Life is too precious for that sort of recklessness.

And this is why I cannot recommend Born to be Wild. Life is too short – you’ll be happier if you just TiVo As the World Turns.

You can find Catherine Coulter here. You can buy Born to be Wild here or here. You can disagree with me below. Or agree. I like agreement.