Dancing

[lliira]

It's worse than we predicted. I did a really loose sporking of it here while reading it, as that was the only way I could get through it. It is deadly dull.

There are many pages of suburban children learning ballet steps. There is no crimesolving, no action, and no sex, though there are many pages about Nathaniel being a stripper and some Unfortunate Implications regarding the kid Matthew. All the characters but Anita, Micah, and Nathaniel are human, and they could be replaced with full humans with no effect on the plot, such as it isn't. I do not know who LKH wrote this book for. Perhaps she is trying to alienate the last of her fans.

(I hope it's okay to post this here.)

Comments

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

It’s weird, kids seem to be really solid on binary roles when it comes to good guys and bad guys on cartoons and stuff, but not so much when it comes to relationships and man/woman, prince/princess stuff, at least in my experience

LJ won't let me edit for some reason here so adding this for clarification...they definitely get the man/woman binary (my nephew has an unfortunately very solid grasp on "this is for girls, that's for boys" already) but what I mean is they don't get the idea of being "the man" or "the woman" in a relationship outside of a person actually *being* that gender (again, just in my experience). And I've never heard any kid ever refer to people as being a prince or princess in a relationship. Most kids see princess only in terms of being literally a princess, they don't get being the figurative/symbolic princess, Prince Charming, etc., like Anita uses the terms. Again though, I'm no child expert and don't even like kids, but I feel like this is just really 'off' somehow

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel less awkward, I totally agree with you. ^_^

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

It's definitely "off". Everything about Matthew is. And the reader is obviously supposed to think everything about him is adorable.