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Six Weeks to Toxic
Meet Bess: a cute and quirky sound artist for feature films with a punk rock past and a penchant for pop philosophy. Meet Maxine: a sleek and strapping journalist whos privileged to the point of confusion. Both women work in Hollywood North, and the two have been best friends for sixteen years. Cut to New Years Day 2000, where the story opens with a headache and a hangover. Bess finds herself facing thirty-five, single, struggling to make ends meet and stuck with a bad case of the existential blues. Meanwhile, Maxi has just landed a new job, a new home and a hot new man. But the tables turn when Maxis relationship begins to sour and Bess finds happiness in all the right places. The two begin to drift and, by Valentines Day 2000, sixteen years of friendship turns in to six weeks of toxic.
272 pages, Trade paperback
First published January 1, 2006
4 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
About the author
Louisa Mccormack
2 booksMy mother taught me how to read when I was twenty-two months old so I blame her for everything. My marvellous Polish grandmother let me know what I was destined for in the most matter-of-fact way when I was around 13. We’d been entertaining a lively correspondence for years and during one visit she happened to mention, “But Louisee darling, you are a writer.” (McCormack is actually my middle name; my last name has so many consonants in a row that everyone stumbles.) I’m the proverbial colonel’s daughter. I was born in Montreal and moved eight times before I was 18. A couple of those postings were to Europe so I ended up at a British boarding school. I’ll have to write about that some day. I majored in English in Toronto and then spent my 20’s in high slacker style, vagabonding in Paris, London, Spain and Africa. I settled down to a Masters in Creative Writing back in Montreal once I turned 30. It was great to carve away so much time to write, despite not yet having established myself professionally in any meaningful way. Eventually, I started freelancing for CBC radio, the Canadian NPR. That led to a TV hosting job. That helped me save up enough money to write another (functional) novel, viz SWTT. Magazine work and summer reporting jobs keep me going so far. But if I want a condo and smart car, I’ll have to start exploring more options. I’m really intrigued at the idea of teaching English to newcomers and refugees. You wish me luck, I’ll wish you luck … hooray, we’ve got luck!
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
May 2, 2016
This started out really badly, but turned into a somewhat decent book.
The beginning felt like it was trying too hard to be funny and cool, and it fell really flat. But as the story went on, things seemed to relax and smooth out a bit. By the end, it was an okay read. Nothing extraordinary or great, but still worth reading. That said, the book started Jan 1, 2000, and reading it now in 2016, it was definitely dated. There are lots of references that pertain to that specific time only.
The premise of the book was great. It's so true that there are expectations and precedents for relationship breakdowns, but not much for friendship breakdowns. It was this premise that had me reading the whole book because I really wanted to see how it was handled. It felt somewhat realistic, and somewhat not. Mainly Bess felt realistic and Maxi was just ridiculous.
Overall, this was a book that took some work to get into and through, and while I'm not sure it was worth the work, it didn't turn out to be horrible.
The beginning felt like it was trying too hard to be funny and cool, and it fell really flat. But as the story went on, things seemed to relax and smooth out a bit. By the end, it was an okay read. Nothing extraordinary or great, but still worth reading. That said, the book started Jan 1, 2000, and reading it now in 2016, it was definitely dated. There are lots of references that pertain to that specific time only.
The premise of the book was great. It's so true that there are expectations and precedents for relationship breakdowns, but not much for friendship breakdowns. It was this premise that had me reading the whole book because I really wanted to see how it was handled. It felt somewhat realistic, and somewhat not. Mainly Bess felt realistic and Maxi was just ridiculous.
Overall, this was a book that took some work to get into and through, and while I'm not sure it was worth the work, it didn't turn out to be horrible.
June 1, 2008
All hail racist chick lit! Louisa McCormack writes on page 24:
"The cabbie was yapping away on a cellphone, contributing to what would no doubt by the vast incidence of cab driver brain cancer in 2025. We were keeping our floozy murmurs safely tucked well behind his Arabic chatter in case he was a proponent of shariah law and wanted us sluts stoned to death. Sometimes I though Maxi and I simply lived to be the diametric opposite of two females in the Saudi hinderland."
McCormack's Maxi and Bess continued indulging their racist musings, while I exercised my privilege as a reader. I shut that book down and picked up Ulises Silva's Solstice, a tale of a vengeful woman of color trained in "editing" the world of its racists and rapists.
PS: This book is solely getting a star so GoodReads records this review. Six Weeks to Toxic deserves no stars at all.
"The cabbie was yapping away on a cellphone, contributing to what would no doubt by the vast incidence of cab driver brain cancer in 2025. We were keeping our floozy murmurs safely tucked well behind his Arabic chatter in case he was a proponent of shariah law and wanted us sluts stoned to death. Sometimes I though Maxi and I simply lived to be the diametric opposite of two females in the Saudi hinderland."
McCormack's Maxi and Bess continued indulging their racist musings, while I exercised my privilege as a reader. I shut that book down and picked up Ulises Silva's Solstice, a tale of a vengeful woman of color trained in "editing" the world of its racists and rapists.
PS: This book is solely getting a star so GoodReads records this review. Six Weeks to Toxic deserves no stars at all.
March 3, 2008
Terrible! Don't bother even picking it up to read the back cover!
June 5, 2009
Too Canadian
June 6, 2012
Weird, weird, weird, weird, weird. Eloquent, right?
March 7, 2023
The pacing seemed slow. It was hard to get into at first. What kept me reading was the description of Bess's job, because that was quite interesting, and also the romance with Marcus.
It's definitely dated and some of the jokes and comments are offensive by today's standards, although honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they were offensive back in 2001 as well. Sometimes I came across one of these jokes and it ruined my immersion a bit.
It's a decent book about a friendship that has run its course. The best way I can describe it is that Bess and Maxi's friendship was built on the premise that Maxi was just a little bit better at life, a bit more elegant, a bit more successful, than Bess. It's an interesting look at how a friendship can change when one friend steps out of her predetermined role. However, I thought the ending was really abrupt. I would have preferred a bit more exploration about the friendship dynamics and the ultimate breakdown.
It's definitely dated and some of the jokes and comments are offensive by today's standards, although honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they were offensive back in 2001 as well. Sometimes I came across one of these jokes and it ruined my immersion a bit.
It's a decent book about a friendship that has run its course. The best way I can describe it is that Bess and Maxi's friendship was built on the premise that Maxi was just a little bit better at life, a bit more elegant, a bit more successful, than Bess. It's an interesting look at how a friendship can change when one friend steps out of her predetermined role. However, I thought the ending was really abrupt. I would have preferred a bit more exploration about the friendship dynamics and the ultimate breakdown.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 13, 2023
I don’t understand why the ratings are so poor for this book. I find that it was well written, with humour, wit, and intelligence brimming throughout. McCormack draws out the unhealthy dynamic between Bess and Maxi in a way that gives the reader an understanding deeper than both characters themselves. While at first the plot was slow, the pace of the unfurling of events accelerated as Maxine’s insecurities and narcissism materialized. I appreciated the intentional control over the speed of the denouement, and found that it mirrors the unpredictability of relationships in the real world- how quickly someone so precious to you can choose to relegate you to the status of “stranger” once again.
September 7, 2019
Woof. This was just a really bad book. The plot was slow and the ending rushed and the dialogue was bad and the scenes were confusing. There wasn't enough drama or development of the friendship or the toxicity. Meh. But I finished it? So something kept me going. I think the romance was well done, to be honest. So it was probably that. I liked Bess, Marcus, and Tara. And Rocks, of course.
August 20, 2021
I read this book years ago as a young teen and loved it. Reading it again years later was a completely different experience. I wanted to love this book. I love the concept but the jokes were dated and tasteless. The characters were hard to connect with. It just didn't sit well.
September 27, 2010
How I Came To Read This Book: Part of a birthday / farewell package from one of my best friends. Think she's trying to tell me something? Kidding!
The Plot: It's the turn of the millennium (cue up the Third Eye Blind) and Bess is feeling a little inadequate, with her 35th birthday just six weeks away. She's unbelievably single, still at the junior tier of her career as a foley artist, and living in a rented apartment with a landlord that happens to be her best friend - a polished if slightly insecure rich bitch journalist named Maxi. Over the course of the six weeks leading up to her birthday, Bess and Maxi's individual fortunes start to change - Bess gets a bright new lease on life, while Maxi seems to be growing increasingly unstable and unsatisfied with her own privileged station in life. Six weeks in and their relationship has hit full on frenemy toxic mode. And for the record, this description is laid out entirely on the back on the book.
The Good & The Bad: Woe is me. I've been pining for a genre of Canadian Chick Lit to prosper, but this book is not the way to make that happen. For one, it was really difficult to follow. That sounds ridiculous - it's CHICK LIT - but the author's style of developing the majority of the book through dialogue. Dialogue that was not only hard to follow as it ricochets around a scene, but also very insular - it felt like you were a ghost walking into a room of people that knew one another, and while their conversation was relatively coherent in relation to one another, the in jokes, references, and responses made little to no sense and didn't warrant much attention to even begin to interpret them. On the same note, the book also had a lot of unnecessary conjectures that didn't really contribute to the main plot points - Bess and her journey of self-discovery, Bess and her career aspirations, Bess and her romance prospects, Bess and the slow unraveling of her relationship with Maxi. I suppose one could argue they gave Bess a more full, well-rounded life but when you're working with less than 300 pages, one ought to make every page count n'est pas?
The other big issue with this book is how much of it is laid out on the back cover (and my plot description above). Although the author does a decent job of portraying the master/serf dichotomy in Maxi and Bess' relationship, it failed to really show why these six weeks in particular led to the boiling point for their friendship, other than an underlying implied unstableness in Maxi and Bess getting a few good things happen to her. They've been friends for nearly twenty years, one would think Bess has other good moments along the way that are comparable to the relatively normal things that happen over the course of the book, yet completely rupture the relationship between the two women. The book would have been more interesting to me had it not just ended at the point where they kind of go their separate ways - the one-paragraph denouement describing the rapid breakdown of their friendship felt cheap next to the slow and deliberate pacing of the rest of the book. For someone that actively used the show not tell rule to move the plot along (primarily through dialogue) it was baffling that the story be so quickly wrapped up in a few short sentences. A slower, painful breakdown after the big 'incident' of sorts would have made more sense in the grand scheme of things.
The Bottom Line: Forgettable, toxic sludge with glimmers of redemption that are just never fully realized.
Anything Memorable?: I will mention again, I was thrilled early on to see the book was set in Toronto. Canadian chick lit, why don't you proliferate more?
50-Book Challenge: Book #45 in 2010.
The Plot: It's the turn of the millennium (cue up the Third Eye Blind) and Bess is feeling a little inadequate, with her 35th birthday just six weeks away. She's unbelievably single, still at the junior tier of her career as a foley artist, and living in a rented apartment with a landlord that happens to be her best friend - a polished if slightly insecure rich bitch journalist named Maxi. Over the course of the six weeks leading up to her birthday, Bess and Maxi's individual fortunes start to change - Bess gets a bright new lease on life, while Maxi seems to be growing increasingly unstable and unsatisfied with her own privileged station in life. Six weeks in and their relationship has hit full on frenemy toxic mode. And for the record, this description is laid out entirely on the back on the book.
The Good & The Bad: Woe is me. I've been pining for a genre of Canadian Chick Lit to prosper, but this book is not the way to make that happen. For one, it was really difficult to follow. That sounds ridiculous - it's CHICK LIT - but the author's style of developing the majority of the book through dialogue. Dialogue that was not only hard to follow as it ricochets around a scene, but also very insular - it felt like you were a ghost walking into a room of people that knew one another, and while their conversation was relatively coherent in relation to one another, the in jokes, references, and responses made little to no sense and didn't warrant much attention to even begin to interpret them. On the same note, the book also had a lot of unnecessary conjectures that didn't really contribute to the main plot points - Bess and her journey of self-discovery, Bess and her career aspirations, Bess and her romance prospects, Bess and the slow unraveling of her relationship with Maxi. I suppose one could argue they gave Bess a more full, well-rounded life but when you're working with less than 300 pages, one ought to make every page count n'est pas?
The other big issue with this book is how much of it is laid out on the back cover (and my plot description above). Although the author does a decent job of portraying the master/serf dichotomy in Maxi and Bess' relationship, it failed to really show why these six weeks in particular led to the boiling point for their friendship, other than an underlying implied unstableness in Maxi and Bess getting a few good things happen to her. They've been friends for nearly twenty years, one would think Bess has other good moments along the way that are comparable to the relatively normal things that happen over the course of the book, yet completely rupture the relationship between the two women. The book would have been more interesting to me had it not just ended at the point where they kind of go their separate ways - the one-paragraph denouement describing the rapid breakdown of their friendship felt cheap next to the slow and deliberate pacing of the rest of the book. For someone that actively used the show not tell rule to move the plot along (primarily through dialogue) it was baffling that the story be so quickly wrapped up in a few short sentences. A slower, painful breakdown after the big 'incident' of sorts would have made more sense in the grand scheme of things.
The Bottom Line: Forgettable, toxic sludge with glimmers of redemption that are just never fully realized.
Anything Memorable?: I will mention again, I was thrilled early on to see the book was set in Toronto. Canadian chick lit, why don't you proliferate more?
50-Book Challenge: Book #45 in 2010.
September 3, 2009
This book was a total waste of time even though it was recommended in 'Vanity Fair' magazine which I love reading cover to cover every month. It was supposed to be about the break-up of a female friendship which I wanted to read about but it was so horribly written and patchy that when the friendship DID end in the last chapter, it made no sense whatsoever as there was no lead-up or explanation for it. The two main characters, Bess and Maxine, are best friends throughout the whole book and then in the last chapter, one minor incident happens [SPOILER ALERT: At a cocktail party, Maxi has a childish outburst directed at protagonist Bess, due to jealousy] and unrealistically and inexplicably, the two women end their 20 year friendship. All the previous chapters never gave the reader any indication that the friendship was in trouble so the crash-landing ending about the dissolution of it was jarring and confusing. I got the feeling that an editor hacked out numerous pages that would have made the relationship (and the end of it) between these two women make more sense, but I can sympathize with this editor: the book was so horribly written, I would have chopped out hundreds of pages as well. Virtually every sentence is constructed with a irritating simile that doesn't even make sense and there is absolutely no plot whatsoever. The most interesting part of the book which shows some "conflict" is when [SPOLILER ALERT:] a dog eats chocolate and has to be rushed to the vet, but by then, it was too late to redeem this bad "chick lit." Do yourself a favor and just re-read 'Bridget Jones' Diary' again! I would give it negative "stars" if I could...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 25, 2010
this book is ostensibly about the slow breakup of best friends in their thirties, but i actually found the breakup rather abrupt at the end of the book. sure, bess & maxine both had their quirks, and maxine was frequently insulting, but i didn't see the relationship as a total disaster until the final conflict, and maxine was really drunk for that, so who's to say it was that big of a deal? oh well.
full confession: i picked up this book at the library used book sale because it has pretty tights and shoes on the cover. i was up for a bit of fluff, and this fit the bill. though poorly plotted, the dialogue had me cracking up. the setting is toronto, a place i love, and bess' job as a foley artist was really interesting to read about. i also like the romance with marcus. decent if not top-tier fluffer.
full confession: i picked up this book at the library used book sale because it has pretty tights and shoes on the cover. i was up for a bit of fluff, and this fit the bill. though poorly plotted, the dialogue had me cracking up. the setting is toronto, a place i love, and bess' job as a foley artist was really interesting to read about. i also like the romance with marcus. decent if not top-tier fluffer.
May 5, 2010
If I could, I would give this book 2.5 stars. I actually really liked the premise of this book, I just felt the execution didn't quite work out as well as it could have. In the hands of a more experienced author, such as Emily Giffin for example, this could have been a really successful endeavor.
This book was set in Toronto and being Canadian, I found some of the Canadian references pretty amusing. That said, the rest of the writing style just wasn't quite there. The author liked to throw in somewhat obscure or really long words that may have been meant to reflect the persona of the character narrating the story but came across a bit cumbersome or unnecessary.
Overall, not a bad book but not a great one.
This book was set in Toronto and being Canadian, I found some of the Canadian references pretty amusing. That said, the rest of the writing style just wasn't quite there. The author liked to throw in somewhat obscure or really long words that may have been meant to reflect the persona of the character narrating the story but came across a bit cumbersome or unnecessary.
Overall, not a bad book but not a great one.
April 23, 2007
This book... I read it quickly, and it was a breeze, once I caught on to the strange rhythm to the writing. It actually pissed me off so much in the first chapter that I nearly gave up, but I was stuck with nothing else to read, so I stuck with it.
The story had its moments, but you know at from the beginning that the best friends will be no more by the end. The intrigue is in the sidelines, with the romances. And there are a lot of plot holes in the best parts.
Not the greatest book, but it was set in Hollywood North. At least it's Canadian.
The story had its moments, but you know at from the beginning that the best friends will be no more by the end. The intrigue is in the sidelines, with the romances. And there are a lot of plot holes in the best parts.
Not the greatest book, but it was set in Hollywood North. At least it's Canadian.
September 15, 2008
About a nice, loyal, quirky girl who gets dumped by her gorgeous, high maintenance best friend.
The author, who clearly has a graduate degree in English, tries rather too hard with her highfalutin adjectives and her clever references to critical theorists, but the book's a good trashy-ish read.
A much better book about female friendships is Elizabeth Hay's short story collection, Small Change.
The author, who clearly has a graduate degree in English, tries rather too hard with her highfalutin adjectives and her clever references to critical theorists, but the book's a good trashy-ish read.
A much better book about female friendships is Elizabeth Hay's short story collection, Small Change.
February 14, 2012
I'm going to be honest, I was actually surprised I liked this story. I mean, I was intereted in the premise of the story, but when I actually went to read the book, McCormack's writing style turned me off. It wasn't even just that, because I felt like the premise that I was so intereted in wasn't even executed properly. (Boo!) However, when I ignore the supposed plot of the book, it's a surprisingly good story. I mean, Marcus was good, but the real gem of the story was Rocks and Bess. Whoo.
March 8, 2014
This book wasn't much. I couldn't relate to Maxi as a person at all. It seemed to me like Bess just trailed along in her wake doing whatever pleased Maxi. The story galloped along, with Maxi chumming up to Tara, and Bess feeling hurt, then Bess gets happy and wham! The friendship is over. Weird! No one in real life would break up a 15 year friendship so abruptly. This book was just dumb (and poorly written as well).
February 23, 2017
OH GOD. There are some books that I struggle with, but I couldn't stop putting this book down. The writing is mediocre at best, but the plotline is pure shit. As I was staring in disbelief at what the author merely spewed onto the page, I thought to myself "Who allowed this to be published?".
The only reason why I'm giving it one star is because this author actually found someone to publish this crap.
The only reason why I'm giving it one star is because this author actually found someone to publish this crap.
May 13, 2009
I thought this book was completely hilarious! Talking about female friendship 'break-ups' hit home with me - I have been there a few times and it gave me some prespective. I love how MacCormack creates characters, they are witty and interesting. I also love how she describes life in downtown Toronto. I hope there are more like this to come.
January 22, 2008
I am really not into this book at all...yet something compels me to finish it. My OCD tendencies, perhaps?
May 20, 2008
I thought this would an interesting and quirky read. I put it down 2 chapters in! It was written horribly, there was no depth to the plot whatsoever.
February 21, 2009
I concur with foster's two stars
July 6, 2009
This book was pretty much terrible. The story was lame and it was poorly written. What confuses me most about the book is that the librarian recommended it to me...
May 5, 2010
I need a 2.5 stars rating for this one.
It was entertaining but the storyline was somewhat lacking and there was no real follow through on the premise of "breaking up with your best friend."
It was entertaining but the storyline was somewhat lacking and there was no real follow through on the premise of "breaking up with your best friend."
October 16, 2009
Slow story but great new look at chic lit
June 9, 2012
Quick read! Just so-so for me...a little scattered & a predictable ending.
September 23, 2013
Really weird book...the friendship breakup finally happened in the last ten pages or so.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews