The Debutantes
by June Flaum Singer
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Book Summary Information
Author: June Flaum SingerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-06-27
ISBN: 0595090648
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: iUniverse
Book Reviews of The Debutantes
Book Review: A GUILDED MESS!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
FIRST...my confession: I 'borrowed' this book...*permanently*...from the shelving department of the Houston IKEA, while shopping with a friend for BILLY bookcases. Somehow, this lonely volume being used as a display piece high atop a towering BILLY case caught my eye; kindly disposed as I am toward exiled books, I rescued 'Debutantes' from its high perch, while my friend, Mr K, perused FLOM, BLIX, GRUNOBS and the other assorted particle board structures in that department. Little did I know that within minutes I would be busting out laughing so hard at the nonsense contained within 'Debutantes's pages, that I began to 'get looks' from the other customers in the store. So went the endless meanderings of 'Maeve,' 'Chrissy', 'Sally Furbush' and the rest of the cast of ludicrous blank slates inhabiting these pages... This book is bad, *BAD* I tell you -- on a GRAND scale! So bad, in fact, that I fought back tears...from the side-splitting laughter as I took in the overwrought tripe cast upon practically every page. Hardly a paragraph passed by where I wasn't howling, snickering or otherwise declaring aloud, "No, this HAS to be a publisher's deliberate joke!...can this book possibly be this MONUMENTALLY bad???" And just when I'd pause to think "Impossible!" -- ah, silly me! -- the page turns and out explodes yet another inspired stinker! I couldn't tear my eyes away flipping through chapter after chapter, reciting bleeding chunks of unpremeditated hilarity to my bookcase- shopping friend -- this was not mere reading; this was rubbernecking a 12-car pile up in prose. Passage after passage of absurdly trite dialog running amuck, a vast sea of phrase turns toward the soaringly insipid, more than 400 pages' worth of aimless floundering around the Brahman Connecticut coastline of the upper crust.
And then, quite suddenly, it all comes to a *screeching* halt, as if someone told our authorette -- perhaps a concerned friend? -- "All right, dear, you need to STOP TYPING NOW...your publisher's been sitting in the kitchen waiting all afternoon, and he says he needs to catch the 4:15 back to New York...and by the way, isn't it time to feed your cats?" This pointless melodrama was no mean feat on the part of Ms Flaum Singer; she brings vividly to life the immortal observation made by yet another fictional debutante, Little Miss Glorie "And-I-Stepped-On-The-Ping-Pong-Ball!" Upson, in 'Auntie Mame': "Books are SO decorative, don't you think?" Indeed, IKEA thought so... which is how my purloined copy of 'Debutantes' nearly ended its days entombed in obscurity as a discarded display filler on the top shelf of a BILLY bookcase in a Houston showroom. It was my good fortune on that fateful day that the other books lounging about were written in IKEA's unintelligible faux Swede-speak, allowing this wretched masterpiece to call out to me in all its triumphant, dripping American purple prose "poo" (an interjective, by the way, which seasons many a page in this unintended laughfest).
I recommend this book to ANYONE who skulks around coffeehouse poetry readings...your star will SHINE BRIGHT treating your lucky audience to the treasured nonsense awaiting them between 'Debutantes's bound covers. As another young debutante snidely proclaims in 'A Room With A View,' "It's SO bad!...nothing's funnier than silly things read aloud." (trust me; Forster's right!)
Pilfering has never yielded such comic pleasures, nor could even the best laid out 'Mad Libs' blossom with passages this ridiculous. One day, I'd like to meet Ms Flaum Singer to thank her for the joy she's given me. And bless the day I walked into that IKEA in Houston...
This is one GUILDED mess, NOT to be missed!
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