Etiquette for the End of the World (2012)Jeanne Martinet
Grade: A
Genre: funny / contemporary / chick lit
Sex scenes: mild
Source: NetGalley
Tess Eliot is 39-years old and has just lost her column in a respected newspaper. Apparently, her recent Tess Knows Best article, with the line “The best way to a man’s heart is through his rib cage, preferably with a hack saw” went too far. Unemployed, with her agent no longer sending out her book proposal for Tess Eliot’s Quick Fixes for Life, Love, and Your Mother-in-Law, Tess is desperate for work.
She stumbles across the World Organisation for Omniscient
Solstice Harbingers who are offering an inordinate sum for someone to write an
etiquette guide in preparation for the end of the world. A visit to the offices
of WOOSH reveals that they really do believe that the world will end on
December 21 2012, as the Ancient Mayans had predicted, and they really are
serious about paying Tess that much money for effectively a how-to guide. She
may think they all need their heads checked out, but these are dire
circumstances.
As if she needed further incentive, Peter Barrett, head of
Donor Relations at WOOSH has been assigned as her contact. He’s handsome,
funny, an older guy, but best of all, he confides in her that he too thinks that
what WOOSH believes in is a load of crap. Somehow, she has to fake her way
through the entire book and she does this the only way she knows how: heavy on
the sarcasm. With chapters titled ‘Boundaries in the Bunker’ and ‘Cannibalism:
Yes or No?’, how could the book not be a hit?
Tess takes her work seriously, and any proper book requires
research. As her eschatological studies take her to Mexico and into Ancient
Mayan history, she accidentally stumbles upon an invention that has the
potential for world destruction in a manner that is all the more frightening
for the dependence we have on technology ...
This was unexpectedly funny. I mean, with a title like Etiquette for the End of the World and a
synopsis like it has, funny was to be expected, but it was better than I
thought it would be. It was compared to Bridget
Jones’ Diary and while I haven’t read the latter, I can imagine that the
comparison in terms of protagonists and the tone of the novel, is pretty
accurate.
For such an out-of-this-world plot (it gets even more
bizarre, believe me) I was drawn in like a moth to the flame. At times, I felt
like I was reading a steampunk mystery novel. The tech being described would be
commonplace in a Parasol Protectorate
novel (review coming soon; the only steampunk I have to use as a yardstick) and
I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was. It really was thrilling to read what
had been marketed as a chick-lit Bridget-Jones-esque novel, only for it to take
the turn that it did. While I understand the marketing ploy behind that, EftEofW deserves to stand on its own.
I’m more likely to read about etiquette rules in a
historical romance, and so finding them in a contemporary was a great change of
scenery. Such a book of rules might seem outdated in our modern society, but
it’s hilarious to read when put in this apocalyptic context and just really
good fun.
I like that Tess is older than your average romance/chick
lit heroine. Not that I can relate to her any better, but it’s nice to see some
breadth in the genre. She’s witty, sharp, knows her own mind and doesn’t care
much for what other people think; my kind of heroine. Regardless, she’s still
prone to make mistakes and one of the things that I love about Tess is that
even though she’s pretty old for this career shake-up she takes what life
throws at her into her stride and isn’t afraid to embrace the new and unknown.
I’m really loving the book-within-a-book thing. The Siren was hauntingly beautiful
because you always knew that there was a grain of truth in those excerpts, but
could never be certain. This was completely different and I loved it for
different reasons. I love to write, but I don’t think I could do it for
something that I didn’t love, believe in, or had to fake completely, much like
Tess is having to do. The humour infused in those excerpts borders on outright
mockery of the very things that WOOSH believe in, yet they lap it right up,
making it all the funnier.
This was Jeanne Martinet’s first novel and I’d definitely
like to see more from her. I don’t read chick lit normally, but from what I’ve
read and of what I know, it seems to me that Etiquette would be a breath of fresh air. Tess was definitely very
different from the heroines that I usually come across, but it’s still amusing
to identify those characteristics that I am used to. This may not be for
everyone, and if I were describing it, it would be as a chick lit in disguise,
with steampunk, mystery and romance costumes among its costumes. A surprise
book, if you will, and who doesn’t love a surprise?
Image courtesy of Jeanne Martinet's website
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