Big Girl

January 4, 2010
Household name Steel (Going Home
) falls short of her best in her latest. Victoria Dawson has always felt like an outcast. When her little sister Grace is born, father Jim tells Victoria she was the “tester cake,” and they finally got it right with the beautiful Gracie. Victoria grows up in her sister’s shadow, and though she loves Gracie dearly, she’s anxious to leave home. The pain doesn’t stop there, though. Her father calls her first job at a prestigious private school in Manhattan “pathetic,” and Victoria begins a battle with her weight and her belief that she is unlovable (even though men pursue her). The premise of the story is sound, but it doesn’t ring true: the parents are two-dimensional, cruel monsters and Victoria seems to have everything: fantastic job, amazing apartment, perfect best friends. It’s hard to believe that her parents would still wield such power. Steel barely grazes the surface of an important topic, but it’s not reality that has positioned her at the top of bestseller lists.

February 15, 2010
The latest Steel novel follows the life of Victoria Dawson, an unwanted, unloved, and unattractive girl who is rejected and ridiculed during her childhood, chiefly by her parents. Born into a family consisting of a domineering father and a spineless yet beautiful mother, Victoria, at least in her parents view, is a large and ugly child. Embarrassed by her looks, her parents focus their attention on their beautiful younger daughter, Gracie. Victoria also spends most of her childhood looking after Gracie, and Steel thickly lays on the Cinderella analogies. The story follows the two girls as they grow up, Victoria doomed to using her brains and Gracie her looks. Steel stays comfortably within stereotypes here, the starkly drawn characters of all of the major players never veer from their pigeonholed lot. The large and unlovely Victoria thrives in her career yet fails at romance. That is, until she loses some weight and has a nose job, which helps her to snare a man almost immediately. At the same time, the lovely Gracie appears to be reenacting her parents lives, marrying a distastefully domineering man who happily flaunts his philandering. No surprises, just a quick read with a predictable plot.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)