Detailed plot synopsis reviews of Not Perfect |
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Nothing is going to take that away.”
Tabitha: “No, of course not, nothing is going to take that away, but I have this idea now that we take and we give, right? And it isn’t always to the same people. Sometimes you take from one but give to another."
You see? You can do anything you like--rob, kill, cheat on your spouse--but if you feed a homeless person, it all balances out.
How self-serving is that?
The end
Literary Criticism:
This was a very, very bad book.
1) There was no plot development. The story started with Tabitha being poor and missing Stuart, which is how Tabitha spent 95% of the rest of the story. When she finally got to see Stuart, she simply announced she was getting a divorce, and that was it. There was no attempt at reconciliation, no plot twist. There was no real story here, except the artificial suffering of Tabitha and her children.
Click here to see the rest of this review2) There was no character development. The only thing that changed in Tabitha is that she stopped feeling guilty for the morphine and peanut oil incidents. But throughout the book she was super-virtuous, as was Toby and Levi and everyone else who begged to tend the homeless.
3) The characters were totally unrealistic. Tabitha can't afford to feed her family but spends time clothing the homeless. Levi spends $50 to get to a soup kitchen to volunteer. None of this makes any sense. But the biggest lack of realism is that Tabitha basically let her children starve for weeks. She should have gotten a lawyer and sued Stuart for child support. She should have gone to a soup kitchen herself to get food for her and her children. She should have gone on welfare and gotten money from the government. She should have gotten a job.
Tabitha did none of these things, instead spending her time opening her v_gina for Toby, doing volunteer work with the elderly, and talking to her sperm bank guzzling friend. That's what made her an unlikeable character. And the more she complained about her situation, without doing the obvious things mentioned above, the more unsympathetic she became.
And yet we are supposed to think Tabitha is a saint. Actually Tabitha was the worst of all because she put her pride ahead of her children's welfare. If she hadn't been proud, she would have gone on welfare and fed her kids.
What could have made this a real story? Well, what if there were plot twists? What if Stuart hadn't truly left, but was spying on them, seeing how they were doing? What if Stuart tried to get Tabitha to forgive her? What if Tabitha made Stuart think she forgave him, but was actually seducing him to steal his money? What if a homeless man raped Stuart in the ass and murdered him, and Tabitha ended up serving this homeless man?
What if the annoying brat kids did something, anything not super-virtuous in the book--maybe became criminals? What if Rachel gave birth to a black baby and recoiled in racist horror? What if Toby simply used Tabitha for one night of sex and then discarded her and went back to his wife?
All of these events would have been dramatic. We would have seen conflict between characters. We had none of that in this book. The title of this book is "Not Perfect" but instead should have been "Unrealistically Perfect".
