Mountain Devil

Recommend: No.

We are too kind to that which stokes nostalgia for our childhoods.

Milo on vanilla Bulla icecream is not the icy delicacy we remember it to be. The Event cinema movie program, filled with sessions of New Year’s Day and He’s Just Not That Into You, was not an arthouse curation. The Westfield Kotara was not a shopping paradise; it just had more variations of the same shitty stores that filled the dingy, sun-starved Coffs Harbour Plaza. Each episode of Gossip Girl ended up following the same predictable formula, and now Georgina is dead.

Curtis Sittenfeld, the author, is another snack lifted from the bag of Twisties of my teenage years, also never quite as crunchy or delicious as I recall. Her debut novel Prep was a romp (from memory). I couldn’t tell you anything about the plot – I read it nearly twenty years ago – but when you have fun with a novel, it tends to linger. Also, it had this silly cover. Remember when those belts were a thing?

But much like Supre, Curtis Sittenfeld was probably best left in the world of teenage consumption.

As an adult, I have read Romantic Comedy (bland) and now the short story collection Help Yourself (also bland). Both are exceptionally unexceptional. Sittenfeld is not a terrible writer. I just feel she has no edge. Her characters are uninspiring, and the plots move in a formulaic manner towards an underwhelming conclusion. Her stories have no comedic twist, no tension and no real hook. If I watched Hallmark movies I’d liken her books to one.

In this small collection, there’s a ‘woke’ story about white woman racism (which has the worst name for a short story ever: White Woman LOL), a ‘classism’ story with a vaguely interesting set-up based around the filming of a toothpaste advertorial (Creative Differences), and the obligatory short story about aspiring writers at college (Show Don’t Tell). At least there’s no COVID story. Although the blurb promises that this is a ‘wryly hilarious and insightful new collection’, it’s really just a way to pass a few hours mindlessly. Reading these stories, I felt like I was in a state of meditation, at one with the universe. I had no interior thoughts. My imagination was a blank, calm ocean. I finished one story and entered the next with no memory of what had just happened and no anticipation of what was still to come.

The one surprising part of this collection was the three page Q&A with the author included at the end. A Q&A is a bizarre thing to include as an addendum when the three short stories only span 78 pages. It reminds me of when you’re making a tomato soup and right at the end you realise, hey, this actually is probably a bit shit, why don’t I add chickpeas? It’s such an underwhelming way to distract from an initial bad concept, that somehow it just makes everything worse. But there is this little nugget:

“I often know that I’m ready to write a short story when I have two ideas that intersect in a way where I suspect they’ll enrich each other. For instance, ‘White Woman LOL’ has the racist-viral-video plot line and the lost-dog plotline, and ‘Show Don’t Tell’ has the fellowship connection and the neighbour.”

Curtis, could you make your writing sound any more boring if you tried? A racist-viral-video and a lost dog? You really can have it all.

When she claims the ideas “enrich” each other she’s being generous. These are two nondescript plot strands that she smooshes together and calls it a day. I put soup and chickpeas together and this does not in itself make a fun time.

I’ve grown up and it’s time to move on – I’m not ready to throw out the tin of Milo, but this will be my last Curtis Sittenfeld.