The Serial

I enjoyed it. Overhated by some and overrated by others, but a fine read in spite of that. Can we spoof the 70s California lifestyle more than it spoofs itself? No easy task, but McFadden pulls it off quite well. And her wit and wordplay are sharp enough to draw blood. The only negative is that the characters don't grow and the plot is just a one-trick pony trotted out again and again. Yes, that IS part of the point! Part of the satire. I get it. But still, that repetitiveness did make me glad to spread it out over several sittings. I like the book, and I'm happy I have her Pulitzer-nominated memoir on my shelf, unread, waiting for me. It's a test of my willpower.

I read this novel as an adolescent when it first came out and was prepared to find it dated because I remembered, vaguely, that it was about open relationships and all sorts of hippie stuff that was so prevelant at the time. How a novel that is so ensconced in a time and place can still sound relevant is remarkable. If you were to change some of the details--hairstyles, labels, even the television programs--you could transplant these characters into the present without compromising the characters or their experiences. I reread it and found myself laughing and cringing. If everything old is new again then this book definitely proves the point. For better or worse, maybe we have not come as far as we had thought.

This is such a great book. Spiral bound and easy to read and I am a big time daytime soap fan so when I came across this it is where I live I took it tongue in cheek but fell in love with it. I have read it many times and if you are a Soap Opera Lover then this book is for you.

This book is hilarious. I've read it to tatters because it's the sort of thing you can pick up, open at random, and spend a pleasant time laughing at the characters who are "slightly off balance yin-and-yangwise but definitely benign". Naturally organic satire at its finest.

The Serial is a soap opera set in Marin County, California. Just north of the Golden Gate bridge it is the affluent epicenter of the self-obsessed. It's the tail end of the decade and the free spirit ideals of the hippy generation have become commodified and trend obsessed: natural fibres and organic produce are de rigueur, radical chic is bought in designer boutiques and everyone talks (without ever really communicating) in the psycho-babble of faddish self-help manuals. Transcendental meditation, personal growth, rebirthing, zen jogging and pet psychiatry are the order of the day. Though everyone in the hip Marin enclave thinks they're liberated and really together, they've simply become an hilarious parody of the straight world they're trying so hard to leave behind. The soap follows Kate and Harvey Holroyd's attempts to keep up with their wacked-out neighbours' fashionable credentials. A year in which they have a trial separation and experiment unsuccessfully with alternative partners and lifestyles.The book has 52 short (2 page) chapters that my significant other and I found just right to read to each other at bedtime.The book was often villified by fellow Marinites. Marin County had all of the wacky new age stuff, open marriages, etc., long before the rest of the country did, and this book follows a couple locked deep in the heart of it. Maybe it's not so surprising now, but it was certainly a shocker then. Otherwise, it's a funny blast from the past which means even more to me as I have lived there.