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Book Review (Fiction) My Not So Perfect Life

My Not So Perfect Life

Sophie Kinsella

Bantam Press 2017                                                                                                     391 Pages

Author Sophie Kinsella’s patented chick lit formula is the literary equivalent of blandly satisfying comfort food like mashed potatoes and chicken soup. My Not So Perfect Life constitutes another helping, only slightly more astringent in flavour.

That faint tinge of bitter comes from the setting of the cutthroat world of marketing and branding in London, with its high-pressure 18-hour work days for pay significantly lower than most corporate jobs.  As a former refugee from advertising, I can testify from personal experience that it can be a brutally abusive environment too.  While British employers in this field, restrained by more stringent workplace legislation, may be kinder and gentler than their Indian counterparts, I wouldn’t bet on it. One of the nastiest ad persons I had the misfortune to encounter was an expatriate Englishwoman in Dubai so awful that even the Arabs couldn’t stomach her.

Conventional mass media advertising and marketing is all about manufacturing synthetic realities, as is a lot of the social media that is now replacing much of it. Kinsella’s protagonist Katie “Cat” Brenner is the usual Cinderella-style underappreciated rom-com heroine – with a small twist.

The novel’s title is a sardonic reflection on Cat’s efforts to project a glossily “perfect” lifestyle on online platforms like Instagram and Facebook, spurred by envy of her peers. The sad reality being she toils thanklessly under a scattily inconsiderate boss in a lowly (and low-paid) admin job that is also the lowest level in the office food chain, enduring a tiny shared flat with no wardrobe, an awful daily commute - besides having no meaningful or fulfilling social life.

Given the sack, Katie reluctantly reverts to her Somerset country girl roots. This part of the novel is the most lively, with the heroine using her marketing smarts to help her father and stepmother set up a successful rural hospitality business. When the hated former boss responsible for her ouster signs on for a country holiday, Katie senses an opportunity for revenge...

Of course, this being a Sophie Kinsella novel, it ends with all wrongs righted, the guilty punished and the girl getting her Prince Charming, besides the requisite happily-ever-after. Kinsella mocks pretence and privilege, but still manages to present the people involved as human rather than mere caricatures. 

Despite the standard chick lit conventions being all present and correct, the focus here is more on one woman’s growth in finding her own identity - in a world obsessed with worshiping superficial imagery.
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