[fact or fiction]

Reviewer Gossip:
encore book-club members dish about the first book up for review

By: Tiffanie Gabrielse

Throughout these past few weeks, as reviews came into my e-mail, I was pleasantly introduced to intelligent book-club members and their reviews.Surprised I definitely was not—instead my feelings of delight and anxiousness to include their thoughts within this week’s edition can be considered only an understatement. I can hardly wait for our next upcoming review—don’t forget, it’s due on the 25th.

As I read through the reviews, many readers agreed that it is a difficult task to make the plight of the rich something the everyday average Joe should care about. Especially in the wake of a flood of television reality shows, it seems the issue won’t be popular unless it concerns Kim Kardashian’s rump or a guide to be another Paris Hilton-ite. While de Gramont’s attempt in Gossip of the Starlings is solid, unfortunately to some the novel can not complete because it seems the interesting story of drugs, friendship, betrayal and scandal is taken for granted, and could have gone much further to amaze its readers.

Gossip of the Starlings involves narrator Catherine’s sudden friendship with fellow private-school friend Skye Butterfield. Catherine tells the story as a young teen in 1984.Thankfully, throughout the novel de Gramont doesn’t allow the childhood depiction to be watered down in trends of the time. If the opposite had occurred, the mood for the world of the piece would have been unnecessarily hindered in movement. Instead, readers appropriately get subtle reminders of the political feel of that time. Perhaps one of the best aspects of Gossip is that readers get caught in the ‘80s without getting distracted by decade signifiers.

Robin DiDonato, a frequent visitor of Wilmington and Cape Cod, begins our club review with a popular opinion: “There’s too much one can’t help but remember about the ‘80s. I recall Debbie Gibson, Madonna and Cindy Lauper with waffle-ironed hair. Unfortunately, I also can’t forget horrible M.C. Hammer pants and stupid makeup trends. None of these things overshadowed the importance and point of the novel because de Gramont thought the same as her readers—they aren’t relevant to [the] story and don’t need to be mentioned. Thank God, because it would have made her less credible to me as a writer.”

Our introduction to our protagonist and antagonist, Catherine and Skye, is done over a stash of cocaine in Catherine’s dorm room. It’s a regular background in the book: Catherine, Skye and Catherine’s friends from home are often snorting cocaine, eating mushrooms or drinking their parents’ liquor. Excluding Catherine’ boyfriend, Jean Paul, each character comes from a diverse degree of privilege.

Skye, our antagonist, is a little more plugged into the time’s politics than her counterparts. Her dad is senator Douglas Butterfield, a JFK-wannabe from Massachusetts, and she works hard to set herself outside of the political scene. By occasionally staging outlandish protests against her father’s actions, in my opinion Skye mistakenly comes across less like an activist and more like a tantrum-thrower.

Jen Lubey of Wilmington adds an important point to our book-club review: “For all their personal internal issues, and for all the coke they find themselves snorting, I was rarely amazed. Their defiance was typical for girls trapped in private school. I can honestly say that though I may not have acted in the exact same desperate manner, I would have acted out similarly nonetheless. Lastly, perhaps because I’m about to be a first-time mother, am I the only one who wondered where are the parents? Or is that the point—they aren’t around?”

Interestingly, I have to agree. Gossip of the Starlings, despite the turmoil our characters depict, delivers little in the way of tension or urgency. I kept expecting something dire to occur as well. Nothing did. The rebellions we see are typical and perhaps necessary for the characters, but, as Lubey points out, it also keeps readers from ever being surprised. I do, however, believe the parents, as nonplussed as they were, are the way they were meant to be depicted.

Unfortunately for some their continuous non-reaction made it all the harder for a reaction from readers.

Nicole Lowry, loyal follower of encore, convincingly disagrees: “You can’t read Gossip of the Starlings without knowing Skye is a bad influence. Arguably, I feel you can’t continue to read the piece without becoming seduced by her words as much as Catherine was.

Skye made being bad seem great, and being seduced by another is the point of the novel. Her starvation is the creation of the devil inside of her.

To me, Nina de Gramont perfectly captures what is like to be an adolescent on the verge of adulthood—I can only imagine their pressure to succeed, the nagging need to conform others inflicted upon them and their internal confliction with their undying yearning to stay young. Skye describes it best when she says, ‘That’s how I feel sometimes. Like there’s this language I knew when I was a kid, and every year of my life it unravels just a little bit. Becomes more and more indecipherable. So that I’m left all alone, trying to figure it out.’”

Megan Canon, 24 and new reader of encore, explains, “The most interesting move in the book for me is the switch between Catherine and Skye.” She continues, “In the beginning we see Catherine as more corrupt. In the end this changes; Skye starts to challenge Catherine constantly. She wants to get more drugs, challenge more moral codes and social conventions. It takes its toll on Catherine. For example, Catherine’s horse-riding career, one [in which] she’s always come close to success before falling short, eventually becomes undone. Finally, her friends from home distance themselves just as any other individual may do. It’s believable, and because it’s believable I didn’t escape anywhere. I wanted more. Page 154 says it best, ‘We understood that nobody would save the world. It would have to find a way to survive on its own.’ Gossip, too, will have to find a way to survive.”

In the end, my opinion of Catherine is that she is the only truly naive character. She doesn’t see Skye’s small betrayals coming, even though encore readers do. Catherine does see the hurt Skye’s impetuous ways cause, but fails to remove herself from them and in essence allows them to occur. Even as she talks to us as an adult, we can feel her still trying to work something out and assert herself.

She’s trying to make sense of it all. As Catherine is coming to grips she is also trying to convince her younger self of something. What that something is remains up to reader interpretation.