Book Review: Love Slave
Love
Slave, by
Jennifer Spiegel
Unbridled
Books, 2012. Novel.
Review by
Debrah Lechner.
If Dorothy had been transplanted over the rainbow to Greenwich Village instead of Oz, and if
instead of insistently seeking her way home she was plagued by the fear that
she was destined to return to the Midwest, I
think you’d pretty much have discovered the character of Sybil Weatherfield in Love Slave.
Of course,
when we meet Sybil, she has aged beyond Dorothy’s adolescent innocence, so that
her inherent adult innocence is a big embarrassment to her, as it would be for
any of us.
She
camouflages that quality of innocence in two ways. For one thing, she
exaggerates her own foibles, such as her wistful but unproductive yearning for
bulimia. There’s not a toilet anywhere near her face during the entire book. (There’s
also no BDSM in Love Slave, in case
you wanted to know, and I’m pretty sure you did.)
More
notably, Sybil also writes a ruminative column for the New York Shock, which covers a number of subjects, including the recording
and taxonomy of “freaks.” Sybil is either optimistic or paranoid about the
number of people around her who can be classified as freaks, depending upon how
you view her obsession.
Some of
the most amusing parts of Love Slave are
the columns for the New York Shock. The
columns also include letters written to her by fans. In the first part of the book,
a fan writes:
You’re a coward. Be a
freak, or change the subject.
-Sue, SoHo
That was
pretty much my reaction, too, but Sybil has already answered that objection in
the previous column:
If I love freaks so
much, why do I still go to the Gap? Why do I shop at Banana Republic? Why
haven’t I even gotten a tattoo?
I’ll tell you why.
Because I’m a voyeur.
Okay,
well, the world needs voyeurs, too. Dorothy was certainly a voyeur. The variety
and quick kaleidoscopic change of people that Dorothy met was bewildering to
her. “My, people come and go so quickly here.” It wouldn’t have been at all
satisfying for Dorothy to become inured to the shock of Oz. And really, who
would want Dorothy to end up wearing a nose ring?
So Sybil
remains, for lack of a better word, a Standard. Eventually, she falls in love.
That outcome is either an epic fail or a happy ending, depending on your
personal standing on the Standard-to-Freak scale.