I’m tired of perfect heroines. Surely I’m not the only one? I love romance; I really do. But if there’s one thing I don’t like about it (other than the manifest truth that my marriage doesn’t seem as perfect as the ones I create in fiction), it’s all these perfect women. Perfect teeth. Perfect waists. Perfects breasts — that goes without saying. I know there are other readers out there like me, because I figure that’s where the popularity of chick lit really came from: Bridget’s weight problems and her unsexy underwear. But these days I’m reading a lot of chick lit heroines who are pretty darn perfect themselves, barring a few minor neurotic traits and a mean boss. I’m sick of them too! Get over yourself, I find myself growling on the train (I read chick lit on my train ride home from the university). Hey! You’re only twenty-two, and you are whining because you can’t decide whether to stay with your boyfriend or skive off with a fabulous old friend who just appeared? HA! Just wait… I’ll spare you the rest of my inner monologue.

What I loved, loved, loved about You’ve Got Male is that the heroine is a real woman: an agoraphobic, funny, sarcastic, rather naive, ex-con. She’s also a genius, but hey, you have to allow a heroine to have a few traits that you don’t personally share. Maybe because she’s a genius, she talks like one, only snappier. She tends to exhibit her genius-ness in an ability to come up with snappy one-liners just when needed. For example, when she walks into the hero’s darkened bedroom and finds him talking in caressing tones to a gorgeous woman who then calls her Strawberry Shortcake, Avery snaps back: “What the hell is that supposed to mean? What, you can’t come up with something more creative than that? I can think of a million things to call you right now.”

So here’s what Liz had to say about her heroine:

“When I was a kid, I loved the show “The Avengers.” I just thought Emma Peel was such a kickass heroine, especially at a time when it was frowned upon for women to be kickass. So it wasn’t really surprising that I came up with an idea for a series about a fictional spy agency called OPUS. When I first conceived You’ve Got Male, I knew my heroine, Avery Nesbitt, was going to be just like Emma Peel: glamorous, leather pants and stiletto boots, utterly fearless.

Bring it on.

I sit down to write. Page one, chapter one, scene one. Enter Avery Nesbitt… Whoa, whoa whoa. She’s what? A computer genius? No way! Emma Peel wasn’t a techno-geek! She was a kickass spy! Oh, all right. I guess if PCs had been around in the sixties, Emma would have been kickass with one. I can still dress Avery in leather and stilettos, right?

So what’s Avery wearing in scene one, anyway? No, no, no, no, no. Pajama bottoms decorated with images of French landmarks, a sweatshirt and fuzzy slippers? Emma Peel never wore fuzzy slippers! Not once! You can’t kick ass in fuzzy slippers! You can only nudge ass in fuzzy slippers! Oh, all RIGHT. Avery can still be fearless and confident and kickass, can’t she?

WHAT??? She has agoraphobia? She’s afraid to leave her own home? She suffers from panic attacks? The only attacks Emma Peel ever suffered came from the bad guys. And she kicked their ass! How’s Avery gonna kick anybody’s ass when she’s hyperventilating?

Sigh. Fine. Maybe the heroine in my next book will be Emma Peel. What’s that? You say in scene one, she’s a piano teacher wearing a pale blue sweater set…?

Elizabeth would like you to know that Avery, in spite of her, ah, idiosyncracies, does eventually get around to kicking ass in You’ve Got Male. She just does it a bit more, um, figuratively than Emma Peel did.”

Oh yah! For those of you who frequent Squawk Radio, Liz’s voice in fiction is just like in her voice in reality, or blog-reality anyway. This is a book that’s like a drink of fresh water to all of us who are tired of reading about perfect women. There’s a bit of a mystery, a sexy hero, and a lot of terrific one-liners.

All Those Other Books

Not Tonight, Honey. Wait ‘Til I’m a Size Six
Susan Reinhardt.

I picked up this book solely for its title — and the purchase paid off. The book is really funny, sometimes vulgar, often true and only very occasionally hits a false note. Apparently Susan Reinhardt is a columnist down south somewhere. Who knew? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time for anything other than reading the CNN headlines on-line. My general feeling about people who have time to read “columns” or an “editorial” or even the whole “op-ed” page is wonder, awe, and guilt.

Parts of this book are laugh-aloud hilarious. Susan’s mother is a southern belle with every bit of the sass and dead-pan wit that people born in the northern states (like me) expect. Her mom gave Susan one piece of advice when it came to marriage: Do Not Let Yourself Go To Pot. Susan takes this very seriously. Maybe a little too seriously when she works herself up to getting a boob job (my thinking being that part of the marriage bargain includes accepting some drooping in male and female anatomy). But in Susan’s Mama’s opinion, marriage is “not a free ride to the pig trough,” and therefore wives should keep themselves made-up and slim. I had to read her advice twice to understand it because in my opinion, it’s men who eagerly line up at the pig trough every night around the supper table… but hey, I’m a cynical northerner. Anyway, Susan takes the whole question of going to pot and the pig trough very seriously.

Especially the morning after she turns forty, when she wakes up and finds that her metabolism packed a bag and went on vacation. “It was as if someone slammed the Off button; thus every morsel with more than three fat grams and any trace of a carbohydrate permanently lodges itself in for the long haul.” I feel her pain.

I have even more sympathy for her when she finds herself longing for a nervous breakdown, the way women used to have, back in the fifties. I’ve had the same thought! She has all worked out: how the police will knock on the door and she’ll throw off her responsibilities and go for a stay at St. Merciful Medical Center, not to return for at least a month. Oh please, can I have the room next door?

I kept laughing: when she admitted that she felt as if she’d been married one hundred years. Hey, me too. There’s a great chapter called “Leasing Life’s Blessings,” about saying goodbye to your children when they trot off to kindergarten. She mourns for the days when she could small sunshine and chlorine in her son’s hair, Hi-C on his breath; for the days when his entire world was mud and chocolate, syrup and watercolors, the monkey bars and rope swings. Maybe I should be reading more columnists, because of course she’s right. There’s going to be that last day when you hold out Lion King underwear for some small sturdy legs to step into… but it wasn’t a day I visualized until she wrote about it. My daughter, of course, wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something as inelegant as Lion King underwear, but the day is coming when I won’t be stretching out cotton Barbi undies and pushing inattentive little legs through the leg-holes.

I’m making myself sad… not the point of this book. Read it and laugh. And remember I have the room booked next to hers at St. Merciful Medical Center!