Saturday, June 2, 2018

119. "The Necklace" by Cheryl Jarvis


Jarvis, Cheryl. The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experience that Transformed their Lives. New York: Ballantine Books, 2009.

222 pages.

Reviewed by J. d'Artagnan Love

I've joined a book club and this was the May 2018 pick. 

The Necklace tells the story of thirteen (mostly) white, upper middle class, middle aged women who buy a $30,000 necklace together. They each get the wear the necklace during their birthday month and have different experiences with it from sky diving, the lending it to a co-worker, to using it for a fundraiser. The group met once a month to hand off the necklace to the next wearer and discuss group business. Often these meetings turned hostile and produced in-fighting. 

That about sums it up. Each chapter of the book is dedicated to one of the thirteen women, none of whom, with *maybe* the exception of Mrs. VanGundy, would I really want to spend time with. I didn't really like these women, and I didn't really like this book. 

I suspect many of my issues with the women stem from the way they were characterized by Jarvis. She glosses over so many problematic issues. Why did certain members leave the group? Why are the women all described as just super fantastic, pretty, slim, gorgeous, and simply THE BEST when there was so much in-fighting in the group and clear political differences? Jarvis could have done SO MUCH MORE to humanize the women to be complex, interesting people instead of making them all sound like middle aged prom queens. 

The book did get me thinking more about the concepts of consumerism and ownership. Again though, Jarvis could have gone into so much more depth with these ideas but these too are merely mentioned and not explored in any thoughtful way.

Ultimately, I thought it was an interesting idea but the writing and composition was shoddily executed. It would have worked just as well as a magazine article than a full book. 

1.5 darts out of 5.

Recommend for: mehhhhhhhh......

Not Recommend for: Readers with a good sense of plot, expository, and characterization. Really, I just don't recommend this in general.


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