Lucy Ellmann is our new and improved Charlotte Bronte. An interviewer once described her: "In person, Lucy Ellmann appears almost pathologically shy. She speaks quietly, sometimes barely rising above a mumble, her big blue-eyed gaze wanders around the room, her hand hovers in front of her mouth as if trying to conceal some orthodontic catastrophe, though I can't see evidence of one. This diffidence is at odds with her prose manner, which is distinctively loud..."I learned from the same interview that readers are not expected to relate to Ellmann's main characters, because they are somewhat autobiographical and morose. They are Brontean [unlike those mainstreamers Austen wrote about] because they are rare and considered abnormal. Sometimes their abnormalities will make you want to reach into the book and slap them for their self-hatred and apathy, but mostly they'll make you laugh. Hopefully, this is a self-conscious laugh. You know, maybe secretly, that Ellmann's characters are not so wildly different from yourself, that their horrifying lack of social ease is understandable even communicable, like chickenpox. Their own self-conscious battle with themselves makes them hyper-aware of other people's feelings, leaving them deprived of the things they want or making them dress in ugly clothing. I will tell you that the heroine's inept and delusional take on relationships is awesomely reassuring, but I don't want to tell you about her sexual malaise, because I think I'll make it sound awful. Both the hero and the heroine dawdle in a semi-romantic [awkward] friendship for a couple years and then the inevitable happens, one of them meets a blonde, tan Californian.Although the characters are sad or are dealing with shit that is sad, the book itself is not sad and is not boring in the way that the depiction of sadness can be in some other books. There is an overall tone of biting self-deprecation that I really enjoyed. Though, sometimes, the language can feel dowdy, like the heroine herself.I was worried this wasn't going to have a happy ending, I thought with all this repressed emotion, someone is going to have to kill themselves, but it ends with a nice, ten and a half pound baby.
Do You like book Varying Degrees Of Hopelessness (2015)?
This book is a parody of the idyllic romance novel, the kind where the meek but virtuous heroine yearns for a meaningful (i.e. married) life until her steadfastness is finally rewarded by the apparition of an unlikely hero come to sweep her off her feet. Isabel, the delusional heroine of this novel, lives her life according to the romantic notions found in such novels. Perhaps I’ve made this sound awful, but the style of the book is so manic and angry that it never veers towards becoming a thing that I hate, i.e. books where the writer uses a cute concept to notice all of the quirky aspects of life. In fact, the high jinks of a modern day woman adhering to Victorian notions of propriety and romance is really depressing and funny, especially as it is paired with the behavior of Isabel’s flatmate Pol, who holds the exact opposite philosophy. Isabel’s romantic delusions can be tiresome at times and the satire itself can verge on cliché, but overall this is a completely original and enjoyable novel.
—Lane Pybas
