14.10.12 Martina Cole - Hard Girls

I suspect that my recent experience of being 'bookless' is one that many will relate to.  I was abroad, and managed to finish the book I'd taken with me.  I was not in a location that allowed me to peruse the titles of books in a shop, and so had to settle for pretty much anything that was going, in the English language.  Whilst I was (on that score) unknowingly stretching a point in selecting 'Hard Girls', I was at the time relatively pleased to lay my hands on a doorstep of a book that would fill a need.  It was indeed a doorstep, and a check of the last page noted '583'.  I considered this page count reasonable, and decided that Martina Cole would help me get to sleep, with her waffle about the police, villains and working girls - the things that represent the sum total of her knowledge.

I finished this tosh during the second week of my visit abroad.  I would like to take this opportunity to warn anyone considering reading this rubbish that it will seriously be a waste of your time, challenge you less that lighting a cigarette with a Zippo on a calm day, and put in jeopardy your wellbeing.  I have no recollection of ever having read such a pathetic story, delivered in such a repetitive, patronising and babyish way.  The reading age of the book is five years and 6 months.  The style of the story telling was to 'spoon feed' the reader with little steps forward in a crappy story, and eeking out the whole thing beyond credibility.  The repetition was horrendous, and the whole book was a sorry, lazy excuse for a novel.  The author has exercised self-indulgence to a criminal degree.

Let me, for a moment, digress from the content, and comment instead on the pathetic layout of the text, together with Martina Cole's unbelievable views on what is worthy of a chapter.  To set the scene, here are some numbers for you.

The story starts on page 3 and ends on page 583.  So, 581 pages - no small number.  What's amazing, though, is that this was apparently worth splitting into 143 chapters, plus an epilogue!  A check of the layout shows that just over four pages per chapter is in fact overly generous, because the first page in every chapter consists of only 60% of it having type - the rest is just wasted space and the chapter number.  Then there are the numerous pages wasted where the last line of any chapter falls, say, a quarter of the way down a page, and the next chapter requires a new page.  This mess, together with some completely empty pages allocated to separating the pretentious splitting of the novel into three books/sections means that empty space accounts for 132 of the 581 pages.

The maths confirm, then, that the pages per chapter = (581 - 132) / 144.  That's 3.118 pages on average!

How the fuck can someone write 144 chapters, each with (on average) just 3.118 pages ???

Chapter 77 contains 0.9 pages of actual type.  It basic terms, the content was: Margaret was waiting for Kate in the car park.  It was raining.  Margaret had something to tell Kate and suggested getting a coffee.  Kate was intrigued and suggested they get a real drink.

This crap hardly warranted being mentioned, let along being allocated a whole chapter to itself.  One fucking paragraph would have done!  However, I was to be further amazed when I came to chapter 98, which was a paltry 164 words.  Yes, 0.6 pages of type, 164 words, and a travesty of publishing.

I was annoyed at various stages of the book by mistakes that proved good grammar from an author is an optional extra when being judged worthy of a book deal.  Eg. "The forensic team were cordening off . . ." and a whole load of other low level oversights.  Spelling "smidgen" incorrectly seemed completely pathetic (smidgeon).

Finally, the quality of the prose was simply awful.  To finish, here's an excerpt from Chapter 68 - see if you can find it in your heart to congratulate Martina.

"Flora O'Brien was a transient from Newcastle on Tyne [I think Martina meant Newcastle Upon Tyne] and she came from a family where her mother was a lunatic who had systematically fallen for men who impregnated her and consequently left her quick smart, and her brothers were both off the scale where mental ability was concerned.  Flora had left as soon as she was able.  Both her brothers were like their mother, small-minded, mentally incapable, and without the sense to get away from their mother's overbearing and lying nature."  This was part of the 1.5 pages of type/drivel that comprised Chapter 68.

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