Mumsnet Talk

Anita Brookner.

Middle aged woman lives alone in London. Goes for walks at dusk. Goes to Paris or nearly has an adventure/love affair. Goes home and continues her life of living in London. Alone. Going for walks at dusk. She speaks French though.

Marilyn French.

All men are bastards who use women as a receptacle to wank into and then leave them with the kids. Leave the bastards before they get the chance.

Barbara Cartland.

Girl meets horrid arrogant man and vows to never speak to him again. Girl meets nice but boring man and gets engaged to him. Horrid and arrogant man saves her from nice but boring man and kisses her. She falls in love with horrid and arrogant man because he is nice after all and marries him.

Novelist's book FFS! Apostrophe!

and sentences! Not sentances.

Victoria Hislop

Woman explores foreign land and hears stories of the past that then reveal how shit her own life/ relationship are in a very formulaic, dull and linear fashion

<gnashes teeth at Victoria Hislop> Such total shite.

Ian McEwan (early) Horrible sordid unpleasantness. The end.

Later: Not much happens. The end.

<rips eyes out at mention of Victoria Hislop>

Jodi Picoult: dysfunctional family has to see a lawyer about something wierd. Lawyer will also be dysfunctional but feisty and will fall in love either with assistant who he/she previously loathed, or member of dysfunctional family. There will be a "twist" at the end which is about as twisty as a very non-twisty thing.

Weird.

Jane Austen: Sparky aspirational spinster with waste-of-space parents meets unpleasant aristocrat, toys with bourgeois life/cheap literature/sense of personal agency; hilarious consequences ensue. Spinster is rescued by said aristocrat from doing any of that stuff. Hilarity ends.

Twilight: "I'm a vampire." "Oh" "Is that going to be a problem" "No".

(padded out with 2,000 pages of teenage drivel and werewolf poetry round cub scouty campfire parallel universes)

<gets a bit twitchy about dear Jane>

Love your twilight one

Fracesca Simmon: Horrid Henry is a bit horrid. Peter whines. The story just stops.

<kills everyone on thread at sight of Jodi Picoult>

Jilly Cooper (Do I dare?)
Posh people fucking each other and one dull/plain one who weighs a foul and disgusting 10 stone glams up and gets to do it with the hero.

I am not clever enough for this exercise but if you haven't already seen it, I beg and urge you to read this The Digested Read review of a Rachel Cusk book as it is just about the funniest thing I have ever read in the Guardian (although best not to read it if you lovee Rachel Cusk):

I mean ARF

Freya North: girl next door with lovely personality and hair that smells of lemons has the most unrealistic, repulsive swearwordy sex ever put down on paper. (she will also have sisters with even dafter names than she has)

D H Lawrence: people in bonnets have lots of sex, but it's never called that. They also look at church spires and gothic arches a lot.

Bibbity that is quite brilliant.

They wrestle with each other and their souls in ol DH too.

Thomas Hardy: Character is fate.

Character is fate. Difficulty in a turnip field.

Charles Dickens: People with ridiculous names get involved in very long and ridiculous plots. The end.

Catherine Cookson: It's grim Up North.

James Patterson: short chapters. Lots of macho posturing and coffee drinking. Bit of detective work. Lots of whining about hard work and long days while the story focuses on drinking beer and having sex lots - so you don't quite get when all this hard work and these long days are actually being done. By the end, you don't care you just want it to be OVER.

Danielle Steele
Tragic girl with more issues than The Big Issue meets extremely wealthy, chiselled jaw, successful, sought after bachelor. Heroine can't overcome her issues, cue 49857498579587 pages of agony then suddenly it's all sorted they kiss have sex The End

EM Forster: Edwardian dress. Stiff upper lips. Difficult emotions. Sadness.

Cormac McCarthy (whom I love btw):

Blood. Horses. Blood. red. Sunset. Desert and mountain. Violence. Blood.