Fun with blurbs (Rebecca Eckler edition)
The other day a finished copy of Rebecca Eckler’s new memoir, Wiped, arrived here at the Q&Q home office, complete with a press release that included some admiring blurbs of Eckler’s first book, Knocked Up. A couple of those caught Quillblog’s attention and seemed to bear further investigation. So for comparative purposes:
From the Key Porter press release:
“This mommy memoir feels like a humorous crash course in maturity.” – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The full sentence in the original review (you can see the complete review here, under “Editorial Reviews”):
Sometimes this mommy memoir feels like a humorous crash course in maturity, though at other points the author’s attitude comes dangerously close to that of one who has a baby as a chic accessory.
From the Key Porter press release:
“A downtown girl attempts a stylish switch to yummy mommy. There appears to be no detail she’s reluctant to share. This isn’t supposed to be a parenting manual; it’s meant to be a funny, lighthearted take on life in transition! – THE TORONTO STAR
Really? An exclamation mark after transition? Well, no. Here’s the full Star piece, with the blurbed bits in bold:
In which a downtown girl attempts a stylish switch to yummy mommy
Rebecca Eckler is the poster girl for a younger generation of self-absorbed Toronto columnists whose favourite subject is, well, themselves. As one of the “kids” hired by the National Post, Eckler is apparently of the belief that the trials and travails of a young woman in the social swirl of the local media pack is of pressing interest. Now, one has to give a kind of grudging nod to Eckler’s enthusiasm, whatever one thinks of the content of her work. There appears to be no private detail she’s reluctant to share, from her sex life to her difficulty with such challenges as getting up on time and balancing her chequebook. So it’s perhaps unfair to have hoped for anything from Eckler in the way of serious contemplation of the grownup life in Knocked Up: Confessions Of A Modern Mother-to-be (Anchor Canada, 374 pages, $22.95), her diary of last year’s pregnancy and the birth of baby Rowan. This isn’t supposed to be a parenting manual; it’s meant to be a funny, lighthearted take on a life in transition. And if you look closely, you may find encouraging evidence, amid all the fretting about weight gain and the benefits of an elective C-section, that wee Rowan may yet be in responsible hands. Eckler, a week after her baby is born, reads a piece a certain Sexy Young Intern has written about a new bar that features waitresses who dance on the bar counter. Somebody skinnier is muscling in on her beat! “I have a baby now, and bar hopping seems, well, not so important to me anymore,” Eckler ponders. “She can have my old job, I think. I barely have time to read the newspaper anyway.”
Read Q&Q’s review of Wiped here.
Brilliant! Glad that you sourced all of the quotes, because this mangling of what was actually published is far closer to a B-movie review than a true statement of fact. Love it!
Thank God someone did that. I remember reading the reviews when that crappy book came out and not seeing a single one that was anything more than lukewarm. Most of them trashed her. Bravo, Quill and Quire.
Don’t know if you’ve seen this on her blog but it’s pretty funny. “I don’t care about negative reviews … I’ve never heard of Quill and Quire … but I am going to go on for a 1,000 words about how little I care.”
http://ninepounddictator.blogspot.com/2007/02/bad-reviews.html
And then there’s this …..
http://ninegrambrain.blogspot.com/2007/02/life-is-too-short-to-worry-about-bad.html
That’s hilarious. I remember when her first book came out, I made the comment to friends that it will only be a matter of time before her poor kid pens her own memoir, no doubt titled, ‘F*cked Up’.
I am shocked that such a pathetic group of individuals would spend the amount of time you have on ripping apart Rebecca Eckler. Especially those of you who claim to have children - why aren’t you raising them instead of posting anonymous, spiteful comments about a person you know nothing about? Actually, don’t answer that question because I’m tuning out now - your comments are disturbing.
Cuckoo … cuckoo …. cuckoo … cuckoo ….
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I’m guess that “shocked” is probably Rebecca Eckler.
Her books are sad, pathetic, lame, shallow, self-absorbed, a waste of space…just like the author.
The fact that they got pulled off the shelf should have told her something. Changing the cover doesn’t change the content of the crass book.
I happen to think Eckler’s books are funny and in keeping with the current chick-lit trend. If you don’t like chick-lit don’t read it. Nobody’s calling it literature, but for a 20-something like me it’s my mom’s version of Harlequin Romance: brain candy. It’s like that man who reviewed Sex and the City and then dissed it because he didn’t get it…
“That man” (Rick Groen in the G&M) totally got SATC–he just found it abhorrent and putrid (like so many other female/male viewers/critics). I love these people who say that men don’t “get” what amounts to the IQ equivalent of an 8-year-old pounding on a whoopee cushion, whether it be a beck-ecks column or “that movie.”
Aw, dummy blogger, not a fan of Sex and the City either huh? Sorry hun, you don’t “get it” either - it’s not about IQ or expecting Academy Award winning performances or being critically acclaimed.
That’s right, it’s about corporate branding and filmic flatulence.