The Bitch Goddess Notebook – Martha O’Connor
Title and author
The novel is called “The Bitch Goddess Notebook” (also known as “The Bitch Posse”) and it is written by Martha O’Connor. Before she became a writer she had many jobs, she was a waitress, eighth-grade teacher and many more. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, the novelist Philip F. O’Connor, and their children.
Summary
The story partly takes place in the present and partly in the past. All the uneven chapters are in the present and the even in the past, the story shifts from Rennie, to Cherry and then to Amy. It tells the story of three misfit schoolgirls who are around 17 years old in 1988, and best friends in the little town of Holland, Illinois. Rennie Taylor, is the virginal A-student who starts an affair with her married drama-teacher Rob Schafer. Amy Linnet, she tears up her cheerleader’s uniform, has a sister who is mentally ill and hates her drunken parents who pretend to be a normal family. And Cherry Winters, the so-called juvenile delinquent who loves Princess Diana, has to look after her mother who is addicted to drugs and plays violent sex-games with her boyfriend. Together they call themselves the Bitch Goddesses and are always together.
De verkiezingen: wat doen de partijen voor jongeren?
However for one or another reason they refuse to talk to each other when they are in their thirties. Rennie, now a successful writer going by Wren (the name she ones hated) sleeps around with her student teachers and her half-sister dumps her baby with her. Amy just lost a child and has a cheating husband, she leaves, drinks a lot and crashes with her car, she lands in the hospital not knowing is she is ever able to walk again. And Cherry is in a mental institution where she has a suicidal friend, a relationship with one of the other patients and still cuts herself. All of them try not to think about “the night when everything went wrong” but cannot live on with this secret, the reason why they are not friends anymore.
When they are young they all are doing drugs, drink and cut themselves and promise to stick together till the end, or as they put it “As longs as the stars are fixed in the heavens and the fish sparkle in the sea”. To seal this pact they all have a small bottle with each other blood in it and a glass beaded necklace around their necks which Amy made as a Christmas present. Rennie becomes pregnant by Rob and he demands that she should have an abortion, together they go to the clinic to get one and after this Rob tells her that he cannot go on with her. Amy, Rennie and Cherry decide that he should pay for this and make a plan to get him really scared. They lure him away saying that they all want to have sex with him, he believes them and together they go to an abandoned barn there they tie him up and with a knife they scratch “Dawn” across his stomach. When they draw a line underneath the name he makes a spasm and the knife pushes through letting him bleed to death. Cherry steps up and tells Amy and Rennie to get away as soon as possible, that they still have a future, and that she will stay there to deal with the cops. After their first and final fight they decide Cherry is right and Amy and Rennie leave. This is the last time that they ever talked to each other.
Setting
In the past: the story takes place in Holland, Illinois. The month, year and place are always mentioned at the beginning of each chapter.
In the present: for Rennie it takes place in Mill Valley, California. For Amy in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. And for Cherry in the Freemont Psychiatric Hospital in Freemont, Illinois.
Time/Period
In the past: it stretches from March to May 1988. The month, year and place are always mentioned at the beginning of each chapter.
In the present: it stretches from March to May 2003, so exactly 15 years later.
Round character / main character / protagonist
Amy Linnet (past): Amy is was Homecoming Queen and Head Cheerleader. They all look like they look on the cover off the book and all are very skinny. Amy has reddish/brown hair till her shoulders. Although she loves her friends, she is afraid that they will find out that she is weaker than they think she is. Although her friends think her parents are cool for always having a supply of all kinds of drinks Amy’s parents are always fighting over her sister, Callie, something Amy cannot stand.
Rennie Taylor (past): She aces every subject in school. She is ultra skinny with a kind of boyish figure. On one evening with her friends she cuts her hear short and dyes it black. She never talks with her mother and her father has a new girlfriend who she hates.
Cherry Winters (past): She does what she wants. She has a fire-red bob, in the novel referred to as a “fuck-me-bob”. She never knew her dad and because of her mother being an addict she has to take care of herself and pretty much can do whatever she wants.
Amy Linnet (present): It is not described anywhere what they look like physically in the present. To her idea she now leads the perfect life. However she looses her child right after it is born which makes her depressed and her husband is having an affair. Although she promised never to become like her parents, Amy drinks a lot, and when really down, still cuts herself.
Rennie Taylor (present): She now goes by the name Wren Taylor, the name she ones hated. She had one successful book on her name and now enjoys the “after-fame”. Nowadays she sleeps around with her student teachers and let them cut her during sex. She loves her nephew, her half-sister dumps him with her and this teaches her that she should stop being selfish.
Cherry Winters (present): She is in a mental institution, she was there before for the murder of Rob Schafer but after threatening a cashier with a knife the day Princess Diana died they locked her up for a long period of time. She still acts like an adolescent and is addicted to cutting herself.
Flat Characters
Rob Schafer: He is the drama-teacher Rennie is having an affair with. Every girl in the school thinks he is handsome. He keeps on telling Rennie that he loves her. The moment Rennie tells him that she loves him too he backs away. That is the thing that killed him in the end.
Marian: Cherry’s mother. She is completely selfish and almost gets herself killed a couple of times because she is shooting heroine with unclean syringes.
Who tells the story
The story is told in the I-person. In every chapter the main character of that chapter tells the story. “As I’m waiting at the stoplight in my dad’s Mustang, snow flings itself onto my windshield.” Because of this you as a reader, really get to know the girls, that is why the murder in the end is in one or another way understandable.
REACTIES
1 seconde geleden