book review: the nanny diaries

i'm on such a reading frenzy lately, i have to start writing book reviews or i'll have nothing at all to write about.

this weekend i read The Nanny Diaries. it was pretty terrible. all the characters, including the protagonist, her love interest, her friends, his friends, and the antagonist family/employer, were dull, cliched, two-dimensional caricatures. i didn't find them believable, so i really didn't care what happened to any of them. i mean, the main character's best friends were named "sarah" and "josh." need i say more?

it was disappointing, because it sounded like a great premise to me: an up-close look at the ultra-rich behaving badly. everyone loves that stuff - see The Simple Life, etc. it could have been very witty and fun, if it had a plot that actually went somewhere and characters that the reader could care about.

the book also had a very dated feel to it, even though it was only published four years ago, because of the frequent reference to cell-phone ownership to signify that someone is rich/spoiled/important/annoying. i mean, come on. even in 2002 cell phones weren't that uncommon. i didn't have one, but i knew a lot of non-rich people who did. it's unfortunate that the authors chose to attach so much character-defining meaning to a device that became ubiquitous so quickly.

plus, the ending was unnecessarily depressing. that was really the cherry on top - an incredibly unsatisfying finale to a thoroughly unsatisfying experience.

RECOMMENDATION: do not read this book. but keep your fingers crossed that the movie, coming out soon (starring scarlett johansson), will make better use of this potentially interesting material.