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language: English
country: USA
year: 2011
form: novel
genre(s): romance
dates read: 22.8.24-24.8.24
(cw: rape)
did you know Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi wrote a novel? (actually two — there’s a sequel.) neither did I until a few months ago, and out of morbid curiosity I decided to check A Shore Thing out from the library. Polizzi credits Valerie Frankel as “my collaborator, who helped me translate my ideas onto the page”, so in point of fact I suspect that most of the actual text of the novel is by Frankel even if the concept, characters, and plot originate with Polizzi.
hyperbolically Italian American cousins Gia and Bella, aged 21, head down the Jersey Shore from Brooklyn for a month, Bella to give herself a chance to think after breaking up with her ex of six years and Gia to escape the city and reacquaint/reunite herself with the area she grew up in and went to high school in, before her parents got divorced and her mom moved to the city. they pursue a somewhat dizzying array of false start romances, two (one each) Real romances, fight off a pair of serial rapists, come to some realizations about themselves, and — after a heart-to-heart conversation with their moms — leave at the end of the month to build on those realizations. they drink a lot, they go to parties, their nights don’t start until 10pm. incomprehensible lifestyle, frankly, but it seems to be how some people actually choose to live.
it has the obvious flaws one might expect from a beach romance novel by Snooki. horrendous gender and sexual politics — though it puts a girl power veneer over its main characters (Bella’s, and there is something genuinely endearing about Gia’s meditation on her purpose in life, for all that the writing in that passage is absolutely absurd. two of the four villains of the novel, Gia’s former friends and now bitter enemies from high school, both have eating disorders, portrayed in a way that, in spite of the novel’s lip service to being understanding, simply feels mean-spirited and cruel. plenty of casual cissexism. deeply heteronormative (though with an occasional “gay guys loved Gia!” kind of thing). it’s obsessed with the sanctity of The Family. you always have to forgive your Family, that kind of thing.
the other two villains are caricatures of WASPy white guys who see the women on the Shore as “trash” and are engaged in a serial competition to deceive and, if necessary, coerce them into sex. Bella does very much almost get raped by one of them, which was handled…okay. I found this aspect of the novel significantly darker than I think it was intended to be, considering its overall lighthearted tone and the fact that the conclusion of this arc is Bella shooting both of them in the balls with a paintball gun and her new boyfriend telling them to “[s]tay out of Jersey”.
on a technical level, the writing is mostly fine — engaging if not for the most part particularly inspired. parts of it are quite funny, but it wasn’t always clear to me that this was intentional — the book takes itself oddly seriously while at the same time constantly (presumably by Frankel’s intention, if not Polizzi’s) pointing out its own stupidity and absurdity. but for a willfully trashy beach romance novel, I think on the whole it was not that bad in and of itself, and it certainly wasn’t aspiring to be more than it was.
its biggest flaws in terms of success / failure at being what it is are, first, its wild overperformance of “Italian” identity, in ways that simply fell flat on their face. the fact that Bella’s boss / love interest is named Tony Troublino is perhaps the most egregious example — Frankel wasn’t even pretending here. there are some wild metaphors throughout, like “a tummy that was hard and flat enough to cut salami on”, which — setting aside the silliness of “tummy” — surely is not actually a real go-to metaphor for anyone. almost all of the “Italianness” in the book felt affected in this way. some of this is presumably because Frankel is not Italian, but some of it seems to be genuine — which is to say that it passed without the narrative elbowing the reader and going, “haha, see?” — which is honestly just depressing.
second, the handling of Gia and Bella’s differences. we’re told repeatedly that Gia is a party girl and Bella is a long time “good girl” who is trying to break out of her shell — and her self-imposed reputation — for the first time. they do, in fairness, have somewhat different attitudes towards the men in the novel, and certainly Gia stays out later, gets drunker, and so on. on the whole, though, I found it difficult to meaningfully distinguish the way Gia acts during the novel’s many scenes at clubs, bars, house parties, etc. and the way Bella acts — Bella is always dressed just like Gia (in fact I would say there was sometimes more emphasis on how scant Bella’s clothing was than on Gia’s), always drinking with Gia, always dancing alongside Gia. we’re told that Bella’s been the more sedate, “good” girl, but if that’s sedate I can only imagine with Polizzi and Frankel would think about my life, lol. dead, perhaps?
I think maybe the passage that best sums up the novel is this conversation between Gia and the guy who’s dating one of her two high school enemies, after the girls gave Gia laxative-laced jello shots at the club:
“Gia, the other night, at the Inca?”
“Thanks again for helping me. You saved my life.”
“Linda and Janey spiked the Jell-O shots with laxatives.”
Gia froze midshimmy. “What?”
“They wanted to embarrass you. Don’t ask me why. It’s jealousy, or revenge, girl bullshit. Two guys would just pound each other bloody and be done with it.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Gia, her party bubble instantly deflating. “I thought they were my friends.”
“I’m only telling you because, once, when I was in junior high, during a football game, I got hit so hard by a linebacker, I shit myself. I swore on that day that if I could help anyone in the future not poop themselves, I would.”
Gia blinked. “It’s pretty amazing that you got the opportunity.”
“Weird, right?”
the book points out its own stupidity like this constantly, though not always quite as obviously as this.
moods: dark (not intentionally), funny (I think not by Snooki’s intention), horny, lighthearted