THE PREGNANCY PACT

TV MOVIE:  THE PREGNANCY PACT/Lifetime Original Movie

I looked forward to this “world premiere” because I was really impressed by Thora Birch’s acting in “Homeless to Harvard.”  Well, I was disappointed, not only in Birch, but in the movie overall.  This story was all over the news last year.  Did 18 teenagers make a pact to get pregnant simultaneously?  The school nurse said so, the principal said so, the mayor of Gloucester, Massachusetts proclaimed there was no pact.  An exclusive interview was given to Time magazine by the egotistical principal.  By the time all of this played out, the confused public moved on to another scandal and the residents of Gloucester were embarrassed and angry.

Fast forward to the Lifetime movie.  The disclaimer announced that this was a fictitious account of actual events.  Things were getting very muddy, indeed.  It caused me to go back and check out news items from last year.  The pact, itself, seemed to hold up on scrutiny.  So, what was embroidered was the Sidney Bloom character (Birch.)  A twenty-something blogger on teen issues and former student at the high school depicted, learns of this sensational story and, video cam in hand, she returns to Gloucester, only to confront her own demons.  At 16, she herself, had gotten pregnant and refused her boyfriend’s pleas to get married and have the child.  Right off the bat, she encounters her former boyfriend, now an assistant principal at the high school.  As Birch works the story she is opposed by the school, the school board and angry parents.  She finds that she can only get at the story through some of the students.  She uncovers a pact but is sworn to secrecy.  She betrays the trust.

True to the morality police who govern movies of this ilk, the word “abortion” is never uttered.  Although Birch makes a public stink about making condoms available in the school, there is no frank discussion here about real-life alternatives.  Set in a working-class, mostly Catholic environment, we never really explore why teenaged girls would elect to become pregnant.

Birch, who seems to be an ardent feminist, is hiding something.  We assume she’d had an abortion.  This is not true.

I found no point of view in this tv film, only a snapshot, blurred by the few characters selected.  I think Birch’s character as depicted was unlikable and was a literary device to tell the tale.

Lifetime, you’ve let me down.

THE SECRET HISTORY

FICTION:  THE SECRET HISTORY/Donna Tartt- Ivy Press – 1992

I consider myself a fairly sophisticated reader but was truly at a loss because of Tartt’s academic specificity.  Although the paperback’s cover describes the tale as “The #1 Bestseller,” I have to wonder whether the buyers actually read the book with full understanding of the author’s references, some of which are written in arcane Greek lettering.  Something was really missing for me and that was a full grasp of the moral imperative, if, indeed, there is one. 

Set in an élite Vermont college, the story involves a quirky group of Classics scholars, specifically involved in what was produced by Grecians in their halcyon days.  The protagonist, Richard Papen, is the newest arrival to the tiny group of students in this lofty endeavor.  They are taught by a professor who cherishes them, regardless of their many flaws.  These students, who would be shunned otherwise, are smugly superior.  It is difficult to like any of them as they drink and drug their way through college.  A couple of them are very rich, one is a poseur and Richard is working his way through.  He learns after the fact that in a reinactment of a bacchanal in the woods, they have killed a farmer.  While Richard seems disturbed by this, he willingly does everything in his power to help cover up the murder.  As part of this coverup, a mastermind of the group feels that one of its own members is placing them in danger.  So they kill him, as well.

The remainder of the book involves the impact of the secrets on each member of the group, including the professor.

To top off this pedantic tale, Tartt includes passages in French, and secrets conveyed in Latin, apparently to show off her academic prowess.

 Although I’m not a stranger to Greek tragedy, I was confounded by this sad tale.

ABUSE OF POWER

FICTION:  ABUSE OF POWER/Nancy Taylor Rosenberg – Penguin/Signet – 1997

If your passion is stories about dirty cops and whistleblowers, this is the book for you.  This engaging and well-told yarn involves an inexperienced female patrol officer with personal vulnerabilities and challenges, working the graveyard shift of the Oak Grove, California P.D.  Working two jobs to support her two children, the 34-year-old widow is perpetually exhausted.

A vivid picture of her fellow officers is painted as Rachel Simmons starts to discover what goes on behind the cops’ blue wall of silence.  She finds that the handsome and personable Grant Cummings is the ringleader of a clique of officers and one seargent who has a free hand in what seems like a precinct gone wild.  She finds that Cummings operates through manipulation, first seemingly going to great lengths to keep his little group from facing discipline and then lining them up for his payback.

After a difficult situation at a convenience store robbery, Rachel has made mistakes.  Cummings shows up and saves her hide.  This gives him a bargaining chip.  He has been after her for some time to come to the weekly watch party held the morning after a shift.  This is held on a deserted beach.  Rachel fends off the invitation until Cummings says she ‘owes’ him.  She complies reluctantly and later finds Cummings on top of her as the other men stand around laughing.  She fears she’s been drugged and raped by one or more of the men.

This brings back her childhood trauma of being kidnapped by a pedophile at age 10 and the nightmares come flooding back.  When she tries to speak out about the drunken assault on the beach she is threatened and discredited.  The more impropriety and illegality she encounters, the worse the threats get.

Rosenberg gives us a couple of memorable characters:  Jimmy Townsend is a very overweight, slovenly cop with an eating disorder and family problems, and Fred “Ratso” Ramon is painted as a strange, timid but violent young man whose ethnicity is unknown.  He is a personal slave to Cummings.  The ringleader is  vile, corrupt and dangerous.  His minions, who are beholden to him, are at his beck and call.

Rachel is set up as the shooter of Cummings in the locker room.  She seems to have means, motive and opportunity.  No one will take her seriously and finds herself in jail.  With the help of her sister, an attorney, she attempts to clear her name and prove her allegations against the unholy alliance.

This book was surprisingly good, with a very surprising ending.

THE SHELL SEEKERS

FICTION:  THE SHELL SEEKERS/Rosamunde Pilcher – Dell/Bantam-Doubleday – 1987

This novel made me yearn for another car trip through Cornwall and the Cotswolds!

I’d never heard of or read anything by this prolific author, who is well into her eighties and retired from writing and living in Scotland’s Highlands. 

Pilcher tells the story of Penelope Keeling, from the present to the past to the present, from London to Pothkerris, Cornwall to her final home, Podmore’s Thatch in Gloucestershire.

Penelope is as strong as steel, weathering life’s hardships during World War II, a failed marriage and raising three children alone.  The protagonist is the daughter of Lawrence and Sophie Stern.  Marrying late in life, Lawrence, a renowned artist, was quite a bit older than his French wife.  And Sophie was more like a sister to Penelope.

The determined young woman was driven to participate somehow in the war effort and at eighteen, joined the women’s branch of the English navy.  She regretted it immediately and was lonely and unhappy in Portsmouth.  Already married but estranged from her husband and with child, she went back to her parents’ cottage in Cornwall and met a dashing soldier named Richard and fell in love.  Richard was training the Americans in climbing cliffs, just before D Day.  Their relationship was passionate and they planned to be together as man and wife at war’s end.

The young man died in the invasion and with heavy heart, Penelope eventually packed up her baby daughter and returned to her husband, a compulsive gambler.  They had three children while living in London and by mutual consent, divorced.

It is evident that Pilcher is very fond of gardening and there is vivid description of that throughout Penelope’s story.  It paints a lovely and very English picture, along with vivid details of Cornwall and the Cotswolds. 

Without going into Penelope’s whole saga, suffice it to say that her adult children play a big part in this tale.  Her daughter Nancy is pretentious and greedy and her son, Noel, is insufferable.  Olivia, a successful career woman, is the most like her mother and often at odds with her siblings.  There is much scheming towards the book’s conclusion.  While Penelope is not a wealthy woman, she has inherited her father’s paintings and sketches.  Painted mostly in the early part of the 20th Century, they have become quite valuable and trendy by the 1980s.  There is much infighting and manipulation over the art works, with two of her children urging Penelope to sell to bolster their own lifestyles.

This is unapologetically a women’s book, as is most of Pilcher’s novels.  Apparently, she lives simply and just tells stories of ordinary but interesting people.

I was most intrigued by the chapters set in WWII England, and overall, found this book quite satisfying and even realistic.