Snapped

by Pamela Klaffke

[Leah]

Sara B. is losing her cool. Not just in the momentary-meltdown kind of way – though there’s that, too. At the helm of must-read Snap magazine, veteran style guru Sara B. has had the job – and joy – for the past fifteen years of eviscerating the city’s fashion victims in her legendary Dos and Don’ts photo spread. But now on the un-hip edge of forty, with ambitious hipster kids reinventing the style world, Sara’s being spit out like an old Polaroid picture: blurry, undeveloped and obsolete. Fueled by alcohol, nicotine and self-loathing, Sara launches into a cringeworthy but often comic series of blowups – personal, professional and private – that culminate in an epiphany. That she, the arbiter of taste, has made her living by cutting people down…and somehow she’s got to make amends.

Snapped only came to my attention when I was offered the book for review, before then I’d never even heard of it. Turns out it was released in America a couple of years ago and is only just coming out in the UK in 2011. I really liked the sound of it, and was thrilled to receive a proof copy to review. I had a few books to read before I could get to Snapped, but I finally managed to find a space in my reading schedule to give it a read and, unfortunately, I wasn’t impressed.

The book opens promisingly enough, with Sara B at a restaurant where she takes a picture of “Parrot Girl” for her DOs and DONTs column. That’s where she meets Eva, who becomes her personal assistant. It’s clear from the off that Sara’s struggling with her life the way it is. She’s in a long-distance relationship with Jack and she’s worried she doesn’t have what it takes to know what’s in and what’s out in the world of fashion. But from there everything just goes downhill and Sara lurches from one disaster to the next and instead of coming across as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, she just seemed desperate and I found it faintly embarrassing.

I must admit, Snapped has one of the worst cast of characters I’ve ever come across. Not only are most of the characters loathsome, but there’s absolutely nothing redeeming about them at all. They’re ugly on the inside and ugly on the outside. Sara is an awful person, she’s crude and I just didn’t warm to her at all. And for me the main character has got to be likeable, or at least have something redeemable about her and she didn’t. Eva, Sara’s so-called biggest fan, was no better. I liked her to begin with, but what she does is terrible. Ted, Sara’s business partner, is disgusting in so many ways and his wife Genevieve is little better. The only characters I liked in the book were the lovely Lila and Esther, two old folks who come into Sara’s life.

Snapped is told entirely from Sara’s point of view, which would work if Sara was at all likeable. But she’s not, so I just found myself wanting to hit her and tell her to get a grip of herself. No one forced her to do the things she does, so her pity party was all her own doing. I quite liked the style of writing, for the most part, but the crudeness made me want to put the book down in shame. I’ve never read a book that features so much swearing and I found it very off-putting. I don’t like it in books and it ruined the book for me. The only redeemable part of the novel was Sara’s idea for her own salvation at the end of the book. Yes, it kind of came out of nowhere but it was the best part of the book. So unfortunately this book didn’t work for me at all, despite the fact that I really wanted to like it.