Rating: a solid 3* of five
I needed to read some prose snarkier, bitchier, and more cruelly insulting than my email. I found a whole shelf of Rodi's novels in my local liberry...mother lode!
Who cares what books like this are "about"? The plot's an excuse to travel through the meanest, nastiest corners of your psyche guilt-free! And what a catharsis it is. Not one of Rodi's characters could remotely be called a "hero" except in the lit-crit sense. Everyone, but everyone, is a self-seeking scumbag with multi-level agendas of unkindness and power-seeking and ego gratification.
*aaahhh*
Honesty is the best policy? Ha! Honesty needs the best insurance policy, more like! The crashing of dream-castles and the fracturing of hopes and the flattening of the well-intentioned is sheer, vicious, Dorothy-Parker-esque Schadenfreude.
Pop a cork. Sip slowly. Savor the wine, inhale the fumes, and remember not to snort the stuff out your nose laughing.