Steeling myself
Last year, I read an eyebrow-raising profile of the author Danielle Steel. The piece went viral because Steel’s lifestyle seems so bonkers. Reading it, I felt conflicted. I liked that she admitted to living off toast, decaf, and chocolate, but was disturbed that her standard writing shift spanned 20–22 hours. I was impressed at the quantity of her output, but had to wonder at the quality of the books she wrote, churning them out as she does (she’s published almost 200 books). Who was I to judge, though, having never read a single one? I remedied that by going to the library to randomly select one of the many Danielle Steels on the ‘S’ shelf. I chose Past Perfect.
I didn’t know yet, but it was a lucky pick. Because Past Perfect, I have realised since reading both the book and its Goodreads reviews, is a somewhat unusual Danielle Steel offering. It’s a supernatural story — a genre that Steel does not usually live in. I enjoyed reading Past Perfect, despite its many flaws…okay, because of them. The plot was ridiculous in the most gentle, unselfconscious way.
I find that the older I get, the more ‘real’ life becomes, there are now days and weeks when all I can safely consume is light, escapist relief. I finally understand people who say ‘I just want something fun and happy and easy,’ which has never been what I’ve searched for in a book until recently. Past Perfect is a right-before-bedtime book, a soothing anaesthetic, an ultimate guilty pleasure for the proud, high-minded reader. The mildness of the story — the wholesomeness, the ease with which the characters moved through their sanitised dream world — lulled me. The weirdness, the plot holes, tickled me. Amusement turned to hilarity when I finished the book one morning and gave my husband a potted plot summary, which went something like this:
So, there’s this couple who live in New York, he’s in tech and she’s an art writer, and they live this perfect life with their three kids. The man gets a job offer from a San Francisco start-up, so the family moves. They buy an amazing mansion in great condition full of original furniture and art in the heart of San Francisco, on a huge block of land. It’s super cheap because no-one else wants it. Why does no-one else want a cheap, amazing mansion? Look, they just don’t, okay? So the family moves in and goes to IKEA a few times and their maid makes everything cosy and clean while Dad works and Mum explores San Fran with the kids, which is nice. Pretty soon they realise that the family who lived there at the turn of the century still lives there. It’s just that they’re ghosts now. The living family aren’t phased at all, they just start having dinner with them every night in the formal dining room. Every. Single. Night. Why aren’t they scared or amazed? Look, they’re just not, okay? So, the living family members and the dead family members are all conveniently matched in age, meaning they each have a new BFF, which is cool. The living family decide not to tell their dead friends that they are, in fact, dead, or how or when they died, because they don’t want to upset the course of history. But they’re happy to unload on their dead friends to get advice on business and family life, and to teach the dead how to play video games and use the computer. Yes, even though they’re transparent ghosts, they can type and stuff, once they’re shown how. The ghosts love tech! And they give great advice because, you know what, things ain’t that different now to how they were at the turn of the century. The dead patriarch’s business advice is great for the living patriarch. The snobbery expressed by the dead, turn-of-the-century fam is totally understood and supported by their BFFs in the living fam. Some things never go out of style. Which reminds me, everyone dresses really well. I can’t emphasise that enough. No one’s sloppy, and that’s very important. In the end, everyone’s happy, even those of the dead who have died again during the course of the story (that damned war!) and have become ghosts again. Five stars.
Explaining the story of Past Perfect, and attempting to answer my logically-minded husband’s questions afterwards, was so much fun that I though, ‘I must read more Danielle Steel.’ But, because I don’t just want to read any old Steel, I’ve attempted to track down the zaniest title in her vast bibliography. I think I’ve found the one. The Klone and I is one of Danielle Steel’s worst-rated books on Goodreads. It’s not just the below-average rating that drew me in, however. Immediately, I had to wonder — why Klone, not Clone? Colour me intrigued, and that’s before I’ve even read one word of the body of the book.
I let my desire to read The Klone and I simmer for a while, because it has not proven easy to get hold of. When I saw it on Facebook Marketplace last week, I pounced. I’m going to read it and report back, in the hopes that it brings me as many lols as Past Perfect did. At the very least, I’ll let you know the reason why it’s Klone not Clone (or not…I suspect there is no reason, other than that it just sounds kool).
