The Man on Top of the World – Vanessa Clark

Title: The Man on Top of the World

Author: Vanessa Clark

Publisher: Bold Strokes Books

Publish Date: August 16th 2016

Genre: Romance, LGBTQIA

Rating: 2 Stars

“Jonathan Maxwell’s life can’t get any better as the drummer of the world’s hottest glam rock superstar, Izzy Rich. Despite the money, the nonstop excitement of touring, and the groupies, Jonathan wants something more. He wants Izzy to be his lover.

Unbeknownst to his team, his fans, and the world, for fun, Izzy transforms in drag for Jonathan, becoming a songwriter/songstress called Holly. Though meant to happen for only one day, Jonathan and Holly’s relationship lasts for weeks. Until one day, Izzy rids himself of Holly forever.

Transitioning from boyfriend and girlfriend to boyfriends, Jonathan and Izzy are on cloud nine. Their love is still a secret, but they couldn’t be happier. Until the tour jumps across the pond to America, where a bold, teenaged fan-girl, Roxanne Shengyi, will impact their relationship—and their lives—in ways that none of them can imagine.”

(I received a digital copy of this book in return for an honest review)

Note to self: ALWAYS research the author and the book before reading. When I saw this book, my heart beat with excitement over that cover. Then I saw the description and I was completely sold. A book about music? I’m in. A book about a complex LGBT relationship that faces an ‘impact’? GIMME. But it was nothing like I was expecting. What I should have done was find out that Vanessa Clark was actually a writer who was well-known in the erotica community, thus leading me to realize that every chapter would be punctuated with a more than descriptive sex scene. Whilst I have no problem with sex, I do not want the details of it occupying a large majority of the book.

The whole thing was just too repetitive. The descriptions were repetitive. The storyline was repetitive. The events were repetitive. I felt like I was reading a fanfic more than anything else. It opened with a sex scene. That sex scene was then the basis of every other sex scene in the novel. The descriptions were almost the same. And, whilst I understand that it is insanely hard to describe the same thing over and over and over again, it got boring. And why did there need to be so many sex scenes? The fact that there were so many just turned this from burning hot to freezing cold.

And then Clark’s descriptions of the music started off as absolutely exquisite. They made it clear that they knew what they were writing about when it came to this sort of thing, naming with ease all of the various instruments and sections of the drums, making it so easy to imagine the music being played. And I love it when the authors have evidently put research into their writing. But what I don’t love is when the same things get mentioned again and again. They mentioned the ‘cymbals, toms and snares’ about 4 times in one chapter – it just got oh so boring and felt like they didn’t know what else they should say. Which is an absolute shame because throughout the book there were perfect descriptions and it was evident she wasn’t lost for words.

Some of the dialogue was also quiet cringy. One of the main characters would come out with things like ‘Oh, I’m such a baddie’ and you’ve just got to think who would say something like that in real life? Some of the ‘sex talk’ also made me feel sour, the way John and Izzy address each other just feels weird. You could tell that there is serious potential bubbling under there but it just wasn’t as polished as it could have been.

There was also too many things that went way over the top. I get that they were famous rock stars and stuff but some of what they did just didn’t seem realistic at all. And then, because it was so over the top, it was just too unbelievable and it was just too hard to actually imagine that what was happening in the book being real. In chapter 3, the band go to an after-party and Clark expects us to believe that the whole thing was just full of people openly having sex in front of each other? No way, I refuse to believe. Maybe at some parties this went down, but not at very public and populated party like we were lead to believe this one was.

It didn’t help that the ending didn’t have as much detail as the first half of the book did. Whilst at the start of the book you had a very clear idea of what was going on, the second book just felt slightly jumpy, despite the plot becoming majorly interesting. It was like Clark had all this fantastic ideas, rushed to write them down and forgot to fill in the gaps. The latter part of the novel was still good but I just missed the in-between bits that helped me to understand what was going on clearly. I think maybe describing the gaps in time a bit more clearly would of helped too.

The final thing that ticked me off was how much Clark glorified drugs. After including a character who had died from an overdose, they continued to include John and Izzy taking drugs because they were ‘cool’, making heroin seem like a real ‘rock’n’roll’ thing to do. People have addictions, people enjoy using it recreationaly and medically. But the amount of drugs that the characters in this book took was way more than that, it was glorified and way over-used. If these people were real, they’d definitely have been dead by the end of the book.

But, despite all my problems with this novel, the storyline was deliciously good. There was a reason that that blurb caught my eye and, despite the overuse of sex scenes etc, the storyline did shine through enough for me to keep reading till the end. I was hooked on that plot and I definitely do not regret reading this. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.

*EDIT*

Following a recent influx of comments by people who I’m surprised even found my review (because, lets face it, I’m hardly what you’d called a known blogger), I’ve felt the need to change some of what I’ve said and how I’ve expressed my thoughts in relation to Vanessa Clark’s novel. All commentators came up with very good points because, looking back, I wasn’t expressing myself in the clearest of manners.

In relation to the sex in this book:

When I found this book, I had no idea that this would be erotica. It was not advertised as erotica, neither was the author described as being one who was very prolific erotic novelist. I should have done research to find this out. However, when it was not advertised as erotica and I excitedly open a book to find the very detailed sex scenes that it did, I was uncomfortable. I was there for the interesting plot, not the sex. I get that the sex was part of plot but in the normal books I tend to read, sex has never been such a prolific part of the book as it was here. If I knew it would be erotica, I of course wouldn’t be complaining about (or surprised by) the amount of sex that ‘The Man on Top of the World’ contained. Which also explains why I didn’t understand why there was so much sex necessary anyway.

In relation to the drugs in this book:

I really did not express myself well when talking about this or even go into why it annoyed me so my apologies for that. I made the book come across more negatively than I intended to and has created a false representation of the book. My main problem stemmed from the fact that Clark was effectively supporting the ‘rock’n’roll’ stereotype and the fact that the characters immediately turned to the substances before anything else. I get that drugs were a major part of 1970’s culture – I’ve watched enough films, seen enough documentaries and listened to enough music to know this. But, whilst Clark was being perfectly true to the era, I found that the novelist was making the substances look like “the answer”. Whenever the characters felt the need to distract themselves from their feelings or the events taking place in their life, they turned to drugs. Now, a lot of people did this, still do this till this day in fact, but from what I recall there was no point where the characters had an moment where they realized that they should not be turning to drugs. Even in Izzy’s interview with Russell, he was asked where he went after the divorce, why he disappeared from the public eye and not once did Izzy go into the fact that he had struggled with drugs, that he ended up in Jonathan’s house knocked out for 3 days because of the way he’d been dealing with the consequences of his actions. And Jonathan had even turned to drugs, with the faint idea of an overdose killing him, but Clark never used Jonathan to go into why he shouldn’t have done this. I fully understand that to other readers, this would most definitely had not been a problem. It was only a very minor part of a larger narrative. But it did annoy me. As a 21st century reader, I know the repercussions of drug abuse – I’ve been warned repeatedly about them, I’ve had to do research into the effects and science behind it, I’ve seen the explicit problems they cause and how deeply they ravage and ruin people and family’s so I didn’t like the involvement of it in this book. Yes, it was perfectly historical,  but I didn’t like it. It was my own opinion and I’m positive that this won’t be a problem for many other readers.

In relation to the LGBT nature of the book:

The main reason I was interesting in this book was because of the support it gave to the LGBT community and I completely neglected to mention this in my review. Clark very successfully gave a voice to trans people through Izzy. Clark also gave a voice to the gay community and depicted the problems that they faced in the 1970’s. They managed to show the beauty of Izzy’s and Jon’s relationship, despite the negative direction it followed. I highly commend Clark for giving this depiction. I also like how she managed to show that the pressures of society at the time caused so much more problems than just the keeping soul mates apart and the hate that would ensue a public announcement. My interpretation of the downfall of Izzy and Jon’s relationship is that Izzy felt too much pressure to conform, leading to him losing his way with Jon and I think it was so important to show how the expectation to conform can seriously effect people in more psychological ways than what you would generally expect. Clark is definitely giving out a strong message through this part of her book.

Clever Girl – Tessa Hadley

“One woman’s life, from childhood to middle age, by Britain’s most acute, perceptive novelist of ordinary lives.
     
All the qualities that readers praised in The London Train are present in Clever Girl, Tessa Hadley’s brilliant new novel. It follows the story of Stella, from her childhood as the daughter of a single mother in a Bristol bedsit in the 1960s into the mysterious shallows of her middle age. The story is full of drama — violent deaths, an abrupt end to Stella’s schooldays, two sons by different fathers who aren’t around to see the boys grow up — but as ever it is her observation of ordinary lives, of the way men and women think and feel and relate to one another, that dazzles. Yes, you think. This is how it is.”

(I just want to say that I don’t think I would have picked up this book if that had been the blurb on my edition. My blurb was much more enticing: “Stella was a clever girl, everyone thought so. Living with her mother and rather unsatisfactory stepfather in suburban respectability she reads voraciously,smokes until her voice is hoarse and dreams of a less ordinary life. When she meets Val, he seems to embody everything she longs for – glamour, ideas, excitement and the thrill of the unknown. But these things come at a price and one that Stella, despite all her cleverness, doesn’t realise until it is too late.”)

Is it just me that found this a bit of a Jane Eyre rip off? I felt like I was following the tale of a modern day Jane, which by no means is a problem, but it just didn’t wow me. I really enjoyed those first opening chapters but there were some really interesting things that came into view and were just thrown into the background. Like, why bring it up, make it out to be a big thing, and then not include it in the rest of the story? (If you’ve read the book and you’re wondering what I’m on about, it’s that whole tree cult thing Stella and Madeline make up).

And then other things weren’t explained in the depth that they could have. For example, the milk bottle through the window: I don’t even know what happened there, what happened afterwards and what happened leading up to it. I know what I think happened but it’s still not obvious, even after re-reading.

And Hadley just seems to have used symbolism at every opportunity, there are things that just scream ‘Look at my deeper meaning’ and while that is no bad thing, I just feel like she’s been rubbing it in my face a little.

But I did eat this book up quicker than you can say ‘Jane Eyre’ ‘Clever Girl’. The words just came together in gentle waves and my hands refused to put the damn thing down. It was poetic and crafted like an intricate piece of art. Yes, despite myself I am praising this book exceptionally well but I can’t ignore the fact it felt so good on a technical level.

But then I do also hate that ending.

What was I listening to?