The Olive Reader

Okay, so HarperCollins asked me to review one or two books for some of this week’s blog entries, and I was expecting The Road by Cormac McCarthy, but instead they sent me Toxic Bachelors by Danielle Steel. It’s like if you’ve ever picked up a glass of whiskey to take a drink, but instead of whiskey it’s orange juice. Now there’s nothing wrong with orange juice intrinsically, but if you’re expecting whiskey it can be a shock to your system.

Anyway, Toxic Bachelors seems to be written for women who want to masturbate but are too embarrassed to buy genuine, hard-core porn. It’s about three attractive bachelors who are determined to stay single and the women who set out to tame them. The first bachelor is Charlie Harrington, a handsome philanthropist (think Edward Stratton from “Silver Spoons” meets Pierce Brosnan) who demands utter perfection from his women (he once broke up with a girl because she ate her peas one at a time; no wait… that was Jerry Seinfeld). The second bachelor is Adam Weiss, a Harvard-trained lawyer (read: Jewish) who likes his women young, hot, and stupid (unlike most of the other men on this planet, who prefer old, ugly, and smart; that’s why you always see us crawling all over each other trying to get into Madeline Albright’s grandma panties). The third and final bachelor is Gray Hawk (no relation to Hudson Hawk or Black Hawk Down), a complicated artist who repeatedly falls for troubled women and is deadly afraid of becoming a family man (he’s been known to pull out before coitus even begins).

As these three walking, talking female masturbatory fantasies prepare to take their annual cruise around the Mediterranean, each meets a woman who will rock his world and perhaps end his carousing days forever. Well, not “perhaps.” I mean, from page one you pretty much know exactly what’s going to happen in this book. Much like in a shady Korean massage parlor, the happy ending is inevitable. Keep in mind, though, that this isn’t necessarily the author’s fault. I mean, can you imagine what might happen if Steel had the womanizing lawyer strike up a relationship with a brilliant young woman and then ultimately dump her for a nymphomaniac stripper with a D-cup? Her readership would go on a menopause-fueled rampage and terrorize the countryside… or at least their local TCBY. That said, knowing exactly what’s going to happen at the end does make for a slightly less engaging read.

The other thing that distracted me was the author continuously rehashing her characters’ Freudian back-stories – as if there had to be something messed-up in a guy’s childhood to make him want a hot, young chick with nice breasts. “Boy that guy’s attracted to Scarlett Johansson, he must have had a terrible upbringing…”

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that while I didn’t love the book, Lois borrowed it from me and I haven’t seen it since. I keep asking her to return it so I can send it back to my editor, but she’s clinging to it like Smeagol and the One Ring.

So, in conclusion, I guess if you have ovaries this may be the book for you.