Dear Ms. Steel,
I used to be a huge fan of yours. With the considerable talent you showed in your early novels, you managed to forge a career and name recognition that virtually guaranteed you would sell anything you write. I wanted to be like you.
But that was before I read the crap-on-a-stick you have been passing off as novels lately. Several of your last books have had the same plot, the same basic characters and the same mundane, clich themes that you keep reverting to. Yes, we can all guess you signed a contract that requires you to pump out a certain number of books on deadline, but isn't it cheating to take the same novel and just change the names and a few circumstances?
Your latest few books all start out with a beautiful, middle-aged woman. She is high-class, has stayed home to raise the kids and has a wealthy spouse. Once the kids are out he cheats-with no warning. They divorce. She is devastated.
Her kids love her more than their dad, even though she nobly protects their father. Of course, she becomes skinny from the anguish she suffers, adding to her vulnerability. She is exquisite and you repeatedly point out that she looks so young she could be a sibling of her children. She finds new love. She ends up a jillion times happier than before.
Can we get real here? There are maybe four women in the country who can relate to that scenario. How about appealing to the average woman?
First-OK, the woman is not so high-class. Money is tight, the house needs work. The kids grow up and move out. She doesn't miss them particularly, but wonders if she should be supporting the little bastards she worked so hard to raise as conservatives, who are now stomping around quoting Marx and calling her a fascist pig for owning a house while people out there are homeless.
NOW we discover Daddy has been balling the secretary. Were there tell-tale clues? Not if we don't count the the weepy woman who keeps showing up on the doorstep at three in the morning. Finally, the wife sheds her denial and comes to terms with her wandering spouse. How? She grabs a tennis racket and with strength developed from years of pointless tennis lessons, plays whack-a-mole with his groin when he falls asleep on the couch. Cops are called, she is frog-marched off for the night, during which time he changes the locks and tries to screw her out of everything they have worked so hard to build by hiding it in his sibling's names.
She immediately calls the kids and tells them what a weenie their father is and why. At first they are supportive of her, but then they decide they have been screwed somehow and begin to play \wounded child,"" snubbing her in the vain hope that she will buy their love.
She gets a job-not one she particularly likes, but one that will put a roof over her head. The stress makes her turn to food and she quickly porks up, gaining 10 or 20 pounds. She has gray hair, wrinkles and whiskers.
When the dust from the divorce settles, she takes her cut and starts a new life. Eventually she meets a man she can tolerate and they shack up. Her kids hate his guts because he is not their daddy, and every holiday for the rest of her life is miserable because she either spends it alone or fighting with family.
It may not be a happy ending, but it certainly is a lot more realistic and fun to read. Some part of the plot is bound to be understood by almost every reader.
So please, Ms. Steel, I beg you, please break your book contract and start over. Please get rid of this boring, elite narrator and give us back our colorful plot. We miss you.
I better go now. I have tennis lessons in an hour.
Taniquelle Thurner is a senior majoring in journalism and Scandinavian studies.
