Four of a Kind
by Valerie Frankel
I really wanted to like Valerie Frankel’s Four of a Kind because it had such an interesting premise and was completely my genre of preference. I love books that pit different women together in a club or something, and they all help each other’s lives through friendship. However, of the four women in the school’s diversity committee, I only liked one of them – and partially, at that. I tried so hard, but the other three were both stereotypical and unrealistic, exercised bad judgment, and were jealous, judgmental, and inconsistent.
On the first page, one of the women professes her intense dislike of another for the sole reason of her hair color. Obviously, the stage is set: either the unoffending blonde will show her underbelly to the judgmental brunette and prove that not all blondes are stuck-up and perfect, or the brunette will totally mature throughout the book and stop judging people. The brunette winds up cheating on her husband with a boytoy at her office and putting her prepubescent son on Zoloft. Her “friends” completely support her, and the readers are supposed to think she does the right thing on all fronts.
Another woman is a doctor, and while she repeatedly closes herself off from being intimate with her new friends, she actually picks fights and scolds them for keeping medical details to themselves instead of asking (and obeying) her advice. Do you believe the hypocrisy? A third woman has massive issues with her teenage daughter, but rather than really delving deep to find out what the matter is, more of her chapters focus on the thrill she feels playing poker. The fourth player (rather than ever plan diversity events, the group only plays poker) is functionally dysfunctional. She holds down a job and raises a child, but her social skills are poor enough to keep her isolated for the rest of her life, and her mental problems are intense and many. Instead of conquering her addiction to food, she merely transfers it to cigarettes, alcohol, and anonymous sex. There isn’t a single line in the book that addresses her problems. She’s merely the cool one who can say racist quips without consequence, who tells it like it is, and who can be crass because, let’s face it, everyone else is crass in their mind, right?
Maybe this book appeals to some women, the ones who really do think of sex all the time and would look at a weekly poker game as self-importance and feminism. But I’m not the type of woman who fantasizes about every single one of my friends’ husbands, then justify my thoughts by assuming everyone else has done the same. I would never yell at someone who’s just undergone chemotherapy because my ego was wounded. Motherhood, to these women, is almost their last priority – maybe it’s above reading or catching up on the news. In my opinion, going behind a friend’s back and ganging up on her about what might be the most personal choice of her life is grounds for the friendship’s termination. If you disagree, go ahead and give this novel a try.
On the first page, one of the women professes her intense dislike of another for the sole reason of her hair color. Obviously, the stage is set: either the unoffending blonde will show her underbelly to the judgmental brunette and prove that not all blondes are stuck-up and perfect, or the brunette will totally mature throughout the book and stop judging people. The brunette winds up cheating on her husband with a boytoy at her office and putting her prepubescent son on Zoloft. Her “friends” completely support her, and the readers are supposed to think she does the right thing on all fronts.
Another woman is a doctor, and while she repeatedly closes herself off from being intimate with her new friends, she actually picks fights and scolds them for keeping medical details to themselves instead of asking (and obeying) her advice. Do you believe the hypocrisy? A third woman has massive issues with her teenage daughter, but rather than really delving deep to find out what the matter is, more of her chapters focus on the thrill she feels playing poker. The fourth player (rather than ever plan diversity events, the group only plays poker) is functionally dysfunctional. She holds down a job and raises a child, but her social skills are poor enough to keep her isolated for the rest of her life, and her mental problems are intense and many. Instead of conquering her addiction to food, she merely transfers it to cigarettes, alcohol, and anonymous sex. There isn’t a single line in the book that addresses her problems. She’s merely the cool one who can say racist quips without consequence, who tells it like it is, and who can be crass because, let’s face it, everyone else is crass in their mind, right?
Maybe this book appeals to some women, the ones who really do think of sex all the time and would look at a weekly poker game as self-importance and feminism. But I’m not the type of woman who fantasizes about every single one of my friends’ husbands, then justify my thoughts by assuming everyone else has done the same. I would never yell at someone who’s just undergone chemotherapy because my ego was wounded. Motherhood, to these women, is almost their last priority – maybe it’s above reading or catching up on the news. In my opinion, going behind a friend’s back and ganging up on her about what might be the most personal choice of her life is grounds for the friendship’s termination. If you disagree, go ahead and give this novel a try.