How Do You Like Me Now? by Holly Bourne - problematic, but really readable

SPOILERS, AS EVER...

I'm here a bit late for this book.  I can see why it got compared to Bridget Jones’s Diary a lot.  And I can see how really middle class it is – as Bridget Jones’s Diary was, in ways I couldn’t when I first read Bridget all those years ago.  You don’t see class so much when you’re younger, unless you’re in a very bad situation where it’s obvious.  Who ARE these people that have endless money to spend going to weddings?  And buying an extra £150 of hair and face product because their ‘facialist’ said so? [When did we stop calling them beauticians?  ‘Cos facialist sounds porny.]

The other thing here was that I really didn’t like Tori, I found her difficult to sympathise with even though I got her.  Her life was ultra modern - an autobiographical self-help book leading to a social media and speaking tour life.  It wasn’t that she was moany – that was honesty.  She was so…her life was so meaningless.  I know it was meant to show how she was enslaved to caring what others thought and how things looked and how that made her judgemental and cold as well as horribly vulnerable, because needing all that outside validation kept her forever open to high levels of emotional draining from everyone and every situation. 

Plus, her BF did behave like a dick, though I’m not convinced that was a portrayal of narcissism; more simple emotional unavailability and stunted emotional development.

I totally got what she said about pre and post baby women, and the sadness of losing someone to that change of internal weather.  It is that tragic when it happens to you.  It’s that tragic when you’re the mum and you are still on the wrong side of the divide – you are still your regular self, just with another human close by who needs care and attention, whom yes, you love unconditionally – but no, it’s not all wonderful.  I am still almost entirely ME. Which is a guilt that doesn’t get explored much.

There was enough in here that was universal that I got – who hasn’t experienced that blow job?; but the females I know of swallowed all of it. (EDIT: 2 days later: why did I write it like that?  Like its a competition - we swallowed it all and Tori didn't?  Like 'we' had it worse?  I didn't mean that; or that it's more normalized.  I think I meant the experience is a bit different but familiar to so many of us.) And yes, it’s very weird that men don’t like to taste themselves on us, in my experience.  What is that about?  Also, there’s a missing scene where a vibrator was going to be a problem, and that scene never happened and is never after alluded to.  Hopefully circumstances made it so Tori never had to go there, as she didn’t want to. But it was odd the way it was built up as a problem then just disappeared.  I got the feeling the scene was edited away.  But not why.

Anyway – an engrossing read, I cared, I wanted her to be happier, I was glad when she went off in the next hopefully better direction.  She had help many of us don’t – a seemingly excellent income; a home she could abandon, and somewhere else to go where they would be happy to have her and have space to put her up for a while.  She had the choice to make a change and the financial ability to make it happen there and then. 

For all my snarkiness, this needed to be told.  But it’s not the best book since sliced bread as many people have recommended it to me as; I see too much class in it – and not mine, so I feel prickly.  That’s not Holly Bourne’s fault.   

I’d recommend this, most people liked Tori as a character more than I did – plus, I usually can’t stay with books or TV/film where I don’t like the characters or at least am enjoying disliking them – but this one I stayed with because I wanted her to be happier.  I worried near the end that she might actually commit suicide, and was relieved it didn’t go that way.   

Also, about the end, when she wrote that letter to her editor, suggesting another book – did that mean she was going to be honest again as before, or that she was going to re-create exactly the same mistake again, by being honest and authentic initially and then lying ever after and becoming addicted to the social media look and like universe?  I wasn’t sure.  Was she saved, or not?  Maybe it was meant to be ambiguous, as we all know what it is to repeat and repeat our mistakes…

Oh, and this book was very funny too.  But the topics underneath that were so serious (underneath the facecream instructions and the shampoo that doesn't weigh down our damn hair) that it's easy for me to forget. 

Remind me to never attempt to be a social influencer, and to never try and know a heroine.  Just leave them where they are, with the book you read and re-read, the film you felt inspired by, the look you base part of your own on.  Take only what's given, don't claw more.  Our heroines are people too.