enjoyed this a great deal where in Emery we get details about girls redecorating rooms and sewing square dance skirts, here we get changing tires, rebuilding engines and cleaning guns.
The book is still tremedously sexist, IMO, Susan is the author's own female insert, I can almost hear the idea of "if I were a girl, I'd be sensible not stupid like regular teen girls!" Susan is written as a level headed, sensible MAN in a girl's body.
The other women in the book are all shallow harpies concerned only with appearances,
I adore this book by the author AKA WEB Griffin, Details about car engines, guns, and hunting thrown into an Anne Emery storyline are pretty amusing, As far as entertainment value goes, it was moderately successful, In terms of, if I would read it again, maybe, But it's dating shows, and to me it is not always in an endearing light, Spoilers ahead, just to warn you,
Writing wise, it drags, oh does it drag, Which is not a great idea when you're writing less than apage novel, I get a lot of repetition of phrases I don't need, such as the rank and full name of a character literally only two pages apart.
It's unnecessary, and I believe could've benefited from better editing in that regard,
Dialogue is clunky at times, especially when he has other characters talk about women, It's as if the words 'women' 'woman' and 'girl' respectively don't exist until he wants them too and he goes out of his way to make even the levelheaded not supremely sexist characters sound more sexist.
'the fairer sex' isn't so bad, 'Female' Really
Also, this may be because of the decade it was written in or for the audience at the time being reminded that Susan is a girl who isn't like other girls at the time got rather irritating and really took away from the very sexist moments she does face.
It was also rather unbelievable to me that Susan was the only girl who 'dared to be different' in her
town, inas a teenager.
The town has to be pretty big if there's a large hospital in it,
So it's just not feasible to believe that only Susan is different, Though my guess is that we're only focusing on one class of people, so we never see any other girl than Susan be different.
Furthermore, it comes across as just a tad condescending to men who didn't pursue 'manly' hobbies,
Just a bit,
Character wise, we're given very little to work with, Susan is the most developed as a character, and even then, all we really get from her is that she's an Army Brat with a chip on her shoulder.
Charley is, in a reversal of fortune, the standard love interest because all the details we know about him connect to Susan/come up because of Susan.
So his character is lacking but since this happens to female love interests all the time, I'm okay with it in his case.
Terry, despite being on the back flap, isn't a major character at all and his only purpose is to move the plot forward.
So why even mention him It's a baffling choice to mention a character who isn't even that important on the back flap of the book.
Ted gets all the focus and character Charley should've gotten and his chemistry and interactions with Susan set up a better romance than her just randomly deciding to get with Charley because 'Well, teenage boys are so silly, I want a man' is really how it comes across.
Randy. Oh Randy. Terrible antagonist choice, since he only shows up to be a bit of a jackass, and then disappears for several chapters before showing up again.
His motives make zero sense, especially when he could EASILY RESOLVE THEM, It bothered me quite a bit when I was thinking about it,
It would've bee one thing if it was all about pride, but he didn't come across as being particularly prideful or even spiteful/vengeful at the way Susan talked to him or treated him.
Which I think would've made him a better antagonist if the author had gone that route,
Or even if there was something in grandpa's Cadillac that he wanted, like hidden treasures or a treasure map or something.
But no, he's just an idiot,
All in all, it was okay, but it's clearly a book that hasn't aged well and suffers from a lack of plot beyond repairing the car and romance, with a rather unsatisfying ending.
But hey, this is only my opinion, I do not know how Susan puts up with anyone in her school, family or neighborhood, Even her charming father fails her when she wants to take automotive maintenance instead of home economics, Despite the overpowering sexism, I enjoyed this book about a teen who inherits a fabulous car from her greatgrandfather and wants to rebuild it herself.
The author's disdain for women as seen in his military fiction written under the name WEB Griffin is legendary: they all fall into the saint or harlot category.
He pays Susan a rare compliment that she is intelligent, talks only when she has something to say, and is without pretension or snobbery.
Despite this critique, I am a big fan of all his books, I read this as a kid and frankly this book was lifechanging, I loved Susan and her spunk and her desire to be herself despite the odds and the horrible feedback she got from everyone around her.
Yes, it's dated, but I think that only makes it more poignant, When Susan inherits her greatgrandfather'sCadillac, her efforts to rebuild the engine bring her into contact with people she's never met before.
No one wants her to take auto shop, her former friends spread rumors when they see her with the boy whose family owns the junkyard, and her cousin can't get over the feeling that the car should have been his.
A maltshop teen romance as written by a man, William Edmund Butterworth III is a writer of military and detective fiction with over a hundred and counting books published under multiple names.
Pseudonyms include: sitelink Alex BaldwinWebb BeechWalter E, Blake sitelink W. E. ButterworthJack Dugan sitelink John Kevin Dugan sitelink W, E. B. Griffin sitelink Eden Hughes sitelink Blakely St, James with Charles Platt and Hart WilliamsEdmund O, ScholefieldPatrick J. WilliamsWilliam E. Butterworth was born on November,in Newark, New Jersey, Mr. Butterworth enlisted in the U, S. Army as a private inand underwent counterintelligence training at Fort Holabird, After assignment to the Army of Occupation in Germany where he served on the staff of the Commander of the U.
S. Constabulary, Major General I. D. White, Butterworth left the service William Edmund Butterworth III is a writer of military and detective fiction with over a hundred and counting books published under multiple names.
Pseudonyms include: sitelink Alex BaldwinWebb BeechWalter E, Blake sitelink W. E. ButterworthJack Dugan sitelink John Kevin Dugan sitelink W, E. B. Griffin sitelink Eden Hughes sitelink Blakely St, James with Charles Platt and Hart WilliamsEdmund O, ScholefieldPatrick J. WilliamsWilliam E. Butterworth was born on November,in Newark, New Jersey, Mr. Butterworth enlisted in the U, S. Army as a private inand underwent counterintelligence training at Fort Holabird, After assignment to the Army of Occupation in Germany where he served on the staff of the Commander of the U.
S. Constabulary, Major General I. D. White, Butterworth left the service in, but rejoined and again served with White fromtoin Korea, After leaving the service for the second time, Butterworth remained in Korea as a combat correspondent, He was later appointed chief of the publications division of the Signal Aviation Test and Support Activity at the Army Aviation Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama.
At first, Butterworth wrote fiction for young adults and romances, He has written thanbooks, many of them military thrillers or police dramas, Butterworth received the Alabama Author's Award infrom the Alabama Library Association, sitelink.