tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4290476670691353414.post1556547266621521083..comments2024-03-06T04:04:24.597-08:00Comments on The Trap of Solid Gold: The Beach GirlsSteve Scotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15863138617383626261noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4290476670691353414.post-41055807995527854742018-05-04T03:15:27.727-07:002018-05-04T03:15:27.727-07:00Thanks for your comment, Keith, and thanks for poi...Thanks for your comment, Keith, and thanks for pointing out that back cover blurb. It is about as inaccurate and unrepresentative as one could be. Did the person who wrote that even read The Beach Girls? I mean, it has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with what happens in the novel. And as for making the book sound like a bit of MacDonald moralizing, how ironic that it appeared on what was, up to that point, MacDonald’s bawdiest novel ever. <br /><br />They probably thought that they were selling what was, to them, an undefinable novel. In your case -- and how many others? -- it did just the opposite.<br />Steve Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15863138617383626261noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4290476670691353414.post-75787737874114879992018-05-03T19:24:49.485-07:002018-05-03T19:24:49.485-07:00It's funny you should mention the front cover ...It's funny you should mention the front cover blurb, as I'd missed that from being so baffled by the back cover blurb. Authors don't write their own marketing copy of course, and certainly there's a lot of MacDonald books (along with many other books of the era and general genre) that have fairly sensationalized summations, but the one for The Beach Girls is just outright baffling.<br /><br />"But why did he choose our beach? He could have gone ten miles up the strip and all of us could have lived happily ever after--with no questions asked. But Leo Rice did ask questions and now it seemed to us that we were dirty. That our drinking, our love-making, and our forgotten pasts were evil. We had told ourselves that we were modern, free women until Leo Rice came along. Until the twisted emotiuons and buried hatreds ended in brutal murder."<br /><br />The tricky part in all this is that it sounds like a perfectly plausible MacDonald approach. He was well known for his moralizing touch, after all, and especially the part about being "modern, free women" so clearly echoes McGee's later contempt for the Playboy bunny set.<br /><br />Between the back copy and the name of the novel itself, I always had the impression that it was going to be some tedious sermon, MacDonald at his worst. For that reason I skipped it again and again, until I was pretty much out of his books left to read. Imagine my surprise when I found that the copy turned out to be pretty much a load of bull. There's certainly no Sin Island-type community all pent up with regret, just waiting for a puritan to come by with a moralizing light to cleanse everyone; the Anne Browder plotline is the closest, but she's still anyone but a woman crushed under the weight of untamed hedonism. And one gets a completely wrong impression of Leo, while the rest of the men are left out entirely.<br /><br />Strange all around. Great book though. Thanks as always.Keith Hannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11340239903203020361noreply@blogger.com