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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Dangerous Admissions

I was very intrigued by Dangerous Admissions by Jane O'Connor. It's a fiction murder mystery written about getting into top colleges. It takes place at a prestigious private school in New York City called Chapel School or "Chaps" that many wealthy students attend. The main character is a divorced mother named Rannie Bookman whose son Nate attends school there. Her older child is a graduate of Chaps. Unfortunately, Rannie's career as a copyeditor takes a turn for the worse when she mistypes the name of a Nancy Drew book called The Secret of The Old Clock by leaving the letter "l" out of "clock." She therefore ends up giving tours at the school to earn money while doing freelance work as a copyeditor. When the director of college admissions, Mr. Tutwiler or Mr. "Tut", is murdered, Nate becomes a suspect, so Rannie begins to investigate the murder on her own. While doing all of this, she is editing a manuscript about research on identical twins and starts seriously dating the father of another Chapel School student. There are many potential suspects particularly in this environment of cut throat competition to get into the top colleges. Mr. Tut is known to have connections and a good recommendation from him is key to securing a spot in the top colleges.

One of the main reasons that I wanted to read it was because my alma mater, Wellesley College, is mentioned frequently in the book. Getting into Wellesley was very stressful for me, and it required a lot of work. That said, it wasn't quite as crazy in reality as it seemed in this book. Certainly there weren't any murders!

In terms of content, I started laughing when I realized what the goofed title of the book said, and I kept laughing. That gag set the tone for the book. It's the type of book that you bring along on the airplane to read and finish it by the swimming pool on your family reunion in Disney World even after it falls in the pool and you have to wait a day for it to dry. Okay, maybe you don't do all that, but I did. The point is that it was engrossing enough to hold my attention during a family reunion. The book was also an easy read. It was fairly predictable, and there wasn't anything that shocked me. However, it was fun to try and guess who the killer was and why. It was also fun to piece all the details of the book together. I don't want to give anything away, so I'll only say that all of Rannie's actions end up coming together at the end of the book.

The most captivating part of the book for me, however, was the author's descriptive writing. For example, one of the characters can't fall asleep at night unless she masturbates. I was very impressed by the way that the author wrote about it. It's written casually but with detail as though she were describing a character washing the dishes. The author wrote similarly about how one character farts, how another character reeks of the food that he's been eating, and the way Rannie and her boyfriend have sex. I also felt that O'Connor did a really good job emphasizing that it was important to Rannie's boyfriend to pleasure her. No, the book did not make me feel like a voyeur. The everyday details made the characters seem much more real than in many books that I read.

If you're a literature snob or looking for a life changing book, this is not for you. However, if you're looking something light and easy to read, particularly if you like mysteries, I strongly recommend it.

posted by Alex Elliot @ 10:06 PM 0 comments

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Name:	Alex Elliot
Home:	MA, United States
About Me:	Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 4 year old and a 1 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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