See the Movie, Don't Wait for the Book (Um... Whatever)

Okay, so it's like this, you know? I was at this used book and clothing sale at a totally swanky prep school -- you know, the kind of private school where the girls wear designer clothes and and carry these sleek little cell phones so they can call their moms and dads, who BOTH, by the way, make six figures in some kind of high profile corporate jobs. The kinds of girls who have perfect hair and chests that aren't as flat as a pancake. You know, girls who do ordinary things like actually go out on DATES.

In other words, not me.

So I'm at this used book and clothing sale, and I see this kind of cute looking pink paperback book with a tiara on it. Now trust me, if a book can look perky, then this book has that look down pat. I wasn't sure about buying it -- what if somebody saw me buying a perky, used paperback and got a look at the title and laughed themselves sick? Because it's called The Princess Diaries and it's obviously the kind of romantic fluff that I should not be wasting my precious brain cells on, brains cells that are frankly pretty worn out after weeks and weeks of after-school algebra sessions. Did I tell you I'm still flunking the course? Even though my mother is dating the teacher? Why do I even bother to get UP some days? Whatever.

*******

Ahem. My apologies to Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries, for that fluffy bit of imitative prose. If the above paragraphs made you laugh, then you might actually enjoy reading The Princess Diairies, Cabot's novel published in 2000, which quickly became a "major motion picture" and has since spawned numerous sequels (several book sequels, and one movie sequel.) If, on the other hand, the above paragraphs made you smile weakly, grimace, or choke, then you should probably stay far, far away from the novel, which is essentially 283 pages of almost exactly that kind of writing.

The ALA Booklist is quoted on the back of my paperback copy, that reading The Princess Diaries is "like reading a note from your best friend." Yes. Your best friend in about 9th grade (or maybe 7th or 8th) who wrote notes that you would probably laugh at AND blush over if you could see them now. The notes that got passed under the desk, and were written with lots of flourishes and frowny faces and exclamation points and hearts dotted over the "i's." Such adolescent prose is fine for a page or two, but 283??

I can't believe I'm going to say this, because I never say this, but the film is far better. And considering the film is a fluffy Disneyesque package clearly aimed straight for the pre-teen and early teen girl market, that really says something about how tired this book made me feel. For the most part, when it comes to film adaptations of books, I usually find fault with screenwriters for being "untrue" to a writer's voice or vision in some way, or for not bringing characters to life as vibrantly as I'd seen them in my own head. I suppose this time out it's cheating a bit, because I actually saw the film first, which means I had those characters and voices already there before I got to the written page.

The novel, in case you're not familiar with the story or its Disneyfied makeover, is a fluffy little bit of fiction about a fourteen year old girl named Mia (short for Amelia) Thermopolis. She lives in Manhattan with her artist mother, and spends part of every summer with her rich European dad (who never married her mother) and snooty grandmother, whom she calls grandmere. Unbeknownst to Mia, who is the geekiest, gawkiest, most self-deprecating young woman imaginable, she is actually the princess of Genovia, a fictitious country on the border of France. Her father has been ill and has finally realized that he will never have any other children; thus Mia must be informed of her secret identity and turned into a princess since she will one day have to take the throne.

Sounds promising, doesn't it? At least sounds as though it has the potential to be a sweet bit of fantasy, a la The Little Princess or even My Fair Lady. But while it wants to play those kinds of charming notes, it also wants to be trendy, hip and acerbic. Ms. Cabot, quite possibly a talented writer (it's hard to tell here, though I do give her kudos for being able to take on Mia's voice and keep it consistent throughout, albeit consistently annoying) has chosen to use Mia's personal diary as a vehicle for telling us the story of this month or so in her life when she is discovering her princess identity and struggling mightily with it. Because it's a diary, and because Mia is a somewhat compulsive list-keeper, we are frequently treated to little gimmicky bits like things she needs to buy at the grocery store, lists for self-improvement, and homework notes. It's all very cute the first few times, but by book's end, it gets a bit wearing.

The secondary characters are not nearly as well fleshed out as Mia, since we only get to see them/hear them through the very limited perspective of her diary entries, which are almost all written in "crisis" tones. Mia lives her whole life in crisis mode, where each day seems to be the worst day she's ever lived through. The best secondary characters are Lily and Michael Moskovitz, Mia's best friend and her brother. Lily is goofy, odd, and yet somehow endearing -- although I suspect my liking for the character in the novel is due in part to how well played the role was in the film. Ditto the brother, who is totally in love with an oblivious Mia throughout, though I think he is given a more prominent place in the novel. The two most colorful and interesting adult characters in the film, Mia's grandmother and her bodyguard, are incredibly thin versions of themselves in their original two-dimensions -- somebody thank the screenwriter, quickly, as well as the casting director who snagged Julie Andrews and Hector Elizondo for these roles. Although the film centered much of the story on Mia's blossoming relationship with her queenly grandmother, the book gives them very little page time together, and Grandmere is not exactly a sympathetic character. Just as she did with Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews humanizes a rather cold, eccentric, tyrannous character from a novel. But at least with Poppins, she had more of a fleshed out character to work with.

To borrow a style trick from Mia's diaries again, I'll end with my own "list" of why this novel really, really bugged me:

1) The almost constant barrage of slang, product placements, and pop culture references. (Madonna. Tab. Party of Five. Snapple. Hillary Clinton. Jean Luc Picard. Princess Di. He's such a Baldwin!) It made the book read like a television sitcom. I suspect it will make the shelf-life of the novel much shorter than the movie as well. It's an interesting experience to read a book that's only five years old -- and already feels dated.

2) The total lack of charm. No, not every book for young adults needs to be charming. Some can be funny, and some gritty and realistic. But when a book purports to be a kind of romantic coming of age story with nods to major fairy-tale elements, a little charm wouldn't hurt. It's as though Cabot was declaring that no princess in this day and age could possibly wear glass slippers, only combat boots, and that our age can only be classified as blunt, sloppy, ugly, bored and irreverent.

3) Its murky morality and its portrayal of family relationships. Mia's mother has boyfriends sleep over at the house and Mia hardly thinks twice about this (except when one turns out to be her teacher). Dad gets around too, and she knows about it. Mia's disrespectful of her parents' authority, vehemently declares she hates her grandmother at one point, and spends most of the time not listening to anything adults tell her to do. She pouts, she moans, she refuses to come home from a friend's house to talk to them, and she has to be talked to like a child and then bribed to do her duty in her "princess lessons" with grandmere. The grandmother is just plain rude and insulting in her desire to "make over" her granddaughter and force her to live this life she doesn't want to live. And no, none of this feels particularly realistic.

4) Its message to young girls, its primary intended audience (it's listed for girls 12 and up, but I suspect even younger girls are reading it). Mia is constantly down on herself, totally fixated on her "loser" looks and underdeveloped body, and her self-deprecation never really comes to an end, even when she gains more confidence toward the end of the book. The way in which she displays her newfound confidence is also kind of painful -- she becomes "assertive," which essentially means she's learned to be mean to people who are mean to her (though she does feel a little bit guilty about it.) She's even bad at math -- how stereotypical is that? I think many young teenaged girls would feel embarrassed reading this book, even if they wouldn't admit it, because Mia seems so gullible and dumb...although her burgeoning and somewhat trendy social conscience (she's a vegetarian AND anti-fur) makes her look smart in contrast to the popular crowd that spends all their time drinking and only wants to get to know her after they find out she's a princess. I confess that parts of Mia's portrayal ring true to early adolescence and its roller coaster ride of emotions, but I also know many fine young women who are basically stable, intelligent, and even content. They like the world, they like themselves, and they even like learning. Mia seems shallow by contrast, and no one really has given her goals to strive for beyond a trendy kind of "self-actualization" or a desire for unattainable magazine model beauty. Oh, and Grandmere wants to make sure she knows how to eat with the right fork.

All in all, not a book I would recommend to my daughter or to anyone else's. If they want to learn to be a "princess inside" all the time, then they'd be much better off turning to Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic tale The Little Princess.


copyright 2005, befus