RED Shack...Warning! SPOILERS! Don't read if you don't want to know the end.

This is my personal reading blog. Complete with spoilers. Currently reading: James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Thursday, October 06, 2005

The Stud, a novel by Barbara Delinksy

The Stud by Barbara Delinsky was published by MIRA books in 1991.

I really disliked this book at first. The passages seemed clunky, the idea was almost unbelievable. A 30-something woman who owns a chain of department stores wants a baby but wants to remain single, so she asks her best friend's older brother, Spencer, if he will donate his sperm. He's an adventurer, he's always out of town, and he's also exceedingly handsome and "from good stock," all of which make him the perfect candidate (I guess). So she wants him to go to the doctor and donate sperm. Problem is, Spencer doesn't want to do that. He has something against masturbation. He agrees but only on the condition that they do it the 'real' way, by having sex. Jenna gives in.

I kept reading, because the book wasn't that long; maybe it's just because I'm a writer and I'm learning every time I read a book, but I wanted to know what happened. Regardless of how I felt in the beginning about the writing, I got used to it and became really wrapped up in the budding relationship between Jenna and Spencer, even knowing how cliche the whole "inexperienced lover goes to bed with incredibly knowledgeable and worldly partner" idea is. I still enjoyed it. When Spencer and Jenna are on their way to the Keys and end up having to emergency land (uh-huh) on a private island for a few weeks, I'm totally loving it. By the end of the book, I was completely turned around. I was thinking, "If I could write something like that," something that's cohesive and so centered in the theme, where the plot keeps taking you somewhere new, and it makes sense, everything fits together. Before this turns into a discussion of how this book is affecting my writing life, I'll end by saying, I'm happy I picked this book up. No, it wasn't a literary masterpiece, but so few books are, in the real world.

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