AFTER CATCHING the Michiko Kakutani review in the New York Times last week, I had to experience the simpering, moronic, cutesiness myself. Sheer disbelief drove me to it. And curiosity, myself always being interested in what one writes if one’s a bankable writing franchise. And masochism. Did I mention masochism? Thus did I come to read Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding (of Bridget Jones fame).
It is a girl-power spy novel in which the love interest is a sexy and mysterious Arab man who just may be Osama bin Laden. Ginger Spice meets jihad. But what’s this about an overactive imagination? Does this Olivia Joules merely imagine the man she’s falling for is bin Laden? Maybe he’s a rug salesman who just pretends he’s the head of the world’s most hated terrorist organization, you know, to impress the chicks. To put it finely: No. Though he turns out–after some artless buildup–not to be Osama, let’s just say that anyone holding out for relief in the revelation of his actual identity will be sorely disappointed.
Olivia Joules first sees him at a launch party in Miami. With his hooded eyes and “aristocratic” looks, he is “a compelling mixture of soulful and powerful.” The chemistry between them is immediate. “He turned, and suddenly his eyes met hers again with that thrilling unspoken message which sometimes transmits itself across a room and says, ‘I want to fuck you too.'”
However much the search for Mr. Wrong has changed in Fielding’s latest effort, the annoying tics of Bridget Jones and her ilk are alive and well in the world of Olivia Joules. There is still the “note to self” chatter, by which the narrator announces her excellent sense of humor to the reader in a winning, self-deprecatory manner, while also catching the reader up on her latest thinking. If a reviewer were to use such a device it would go like this: “Alternate theory of book: Helen Fielding has writ. carefully crafted satire of girl power by submitting its childish codes and romantic yearnings to the moralistic, good vs. evil conventions of spy thriller. Problem with alternate theory: total lack of supporting evidence, such as authorial self-awareness.”
Another chick lit tic is the mall trick of piling up brand names in order to create a positive shopping environment. The Devil Wears Prada is only the most famous example of the shop of recognition as literary device. On the influential and widely seen Sex and the City, too, one found the names of shoemakers and fashion designers spoken like magic spells, conjuring a sense of feminine identity and well-being.
Even this, however, Fielding messes up with a clutter of Hollywood B-list names and women’s magazine allusions, none of which serve any narrative or satiric purpose. It’s as if she is about to make light of some of the biggest overraters on the planet, but then (her ambitions intact) thinks better of it. Indeed, the satire serves no satiric purpose. No more effort is expended on the beautiful crowd and Hollywood and glamour’s international conjugations than is necessary to comfort the reader with the thought that the author reads the same magazines and watches the same cable news shows as you do. Aren’t you flattered?
The book is engagé not only when it comes to fashion and pop culture. Fielding arms her spunky heroine with a knowledge of current events and the ambition of being a serious person one day. To the man she believes might be Osama bin Laden, she explains her opposition to the war in Iraq: “Well, since you ask: there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda or September 11, and [the United States and its allies] were punishing a breach of international law by breaking international law themselves.”
One can easily imagine a suave English or European character (male or female) persuasively taking a dismissive view of the American justifications for war, but Fielding gives us a young flirt trying to impress a murdering jihadist with anti-American pap. In the meantime, al Qaeda (in the novel and, alas, in the not-so-silly world outside the novel) is killing people by the hundreds in terrorist attacks.
David Skinner is an assistant managing editor at The Weekly Standard. He is also the editor of Doublethink magazine.
