MISS UNDERSTANDING

Author: Susan Stephens ISBN: 0061133884 11/2006 CONTEMPORARY Publisher: Avon Trade

Zoe Rose never quite fit in. As the only kid in kindergarten with an enormous red afro, Zoe was taunted by the other little girls for refusing to share her "Annie" wig, even when she swore it was her own hair (it was). In second grade, after seeing her best friend ridiculed for wearing a dirty, pink, polka-dot party dress to school every day, she became obsessed with understanding what makes normal girls tick and why they're so cruel to the girls who never seem to "get it." And so Zoe begins a lifelong study of girl behavior, and by thirty, finds herself editor of Issues magazine. Determined to raid the locker room of the female psyche and rip open the frilly façade of femininity once and for all, she sets out to reform an entire nation of women, beginning with the readers of the most notorious magazine on Madison Avenue. It's the feminist vs. the fashionistas. Can Zoe stop girls from behaving badly toward other girls, and turn them into a strong, united force that can succeed in our male-dominated world? Or will her spectacularly warped sense of humor, pathetic wardrobe, and plethora of psychosomatic illnesses get her eaten alive? Zoe's willing to risk losing it all, including her mind, but she'll walk away with something she never dreamed she wanted: the little girl hiding inside of her.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Filled with quirky and eccentric characters—the main character, Zoe, not withstanding—MISS UNDERSTANDING caught me a bit off guard. Funny and thoroughly chaotic, this story featuring a Monk-like (as in the T.V. personality) lead character was, I admit, often entertaining, funny, and sometimes sad and poignant. Yet, overall I found myself a bit disappointed in the story's dialogue as well as Zoe's character, who was a bit hard to like.

Zoe, much like Monk, has a phobia about everything, but most of all with getting pregnant. It became obvious early on that Zoe was pregnant, though she seemed to be the only one of the characters who couldn't see it. I didn't find her ad ideas or the articles she wrote to be all that creative or awe inspiring—many of them seemed to ramble and I nearly fell asleep more than once just trying to get to the end of them. If this is what it takes to become a whiz kid on Madison Avenue, then I definitely need to get out of the midwest!

But what really did it in for me was this—the dialogue. Confusing and sometimes rambling (as in the case above), it was hard at times to get through. Characters who were in dialogue with each other, such as during the corporate meetings, seemed to change at the drop of a paragraph, with no warning or lead in to the reader. I can't tell you how many times I had to go back to the previous paragraph and reread it to figure out when a character had stopped talking and just who was talking now. It was very distracting, not to mention more than a little bit irritating.

I really wish I could have given this a better review. Some of the characters, such as the devious twin models who constantly try to undercut Zoe, and Ruth, her continually soused coworker, were much more intriguing to read about than neurotic Zoe. And how Zoe's long suffering hunk-of-a-boyfriend put up with her at all, is truly beyond me.

MISS UNDERSTANDING picks up where SHE'S GOT ISSUES left off. Even though I didn't read that first book, I had no trouble following the events and storyline that plods through MISS UNDERSTANDING. I just wish the main character and the dialogue had been a little bit better executed.

Nancy Davis