Modelland by Tyra Banks
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
01/15/2016 Update:
Officially announcing that I am over 50% of the way through this muhfucker!
I feel like a little celebration is in order:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SUzc…
Yes, none of us thought it was possible. Mostly me. I have a whole new respect for the people who have finished this book and reviewed it here. My hat is off to you.
I also have a whole new suspicion. How did you do it? What pulled you through on those dark nights?
We visited a few new locations since we last spoke. So let me bring you up to speed.
First, the OoAh. Which is spelled OoAh, Oooo-ahhhh, and OOAH on the same page.
Let me place here the text Tyra uses to describe this place when she enters:
The fluttering light at the end of the hallway expanded into an immense glowing circle. A Mannecant stood at the reception desk shaped like the letters H, O, and A. The letters moved around in a disorganized jumble, probably making it hard to set anything on the surface. There was a great round room behind the desk, its walls covered in a furry-looking fabric and its ceiling gently pulsing up and down, as if breathing.”
This is the entrance to the OOAH, which is basically a spa.
Let me try. I’ll try my best.
A desk. Made of giant letters. Which move around on their own. “PROBABLY” making it hard to set anything down on the surface of the desk.
No. Fucking. Shit. A desk that’s made of three components that are all oddly-shaped and constantly moving. I might go so far to suggest that this is a worthless design for a desk.
I want to see someone take a shit in Modelland. I’m just coming out and saying it. I have a feeling that, at some point, a guru will remove the models’ need to shit. They’ve already had their periods removed, and a guru was able to remove and replace hunger at will, so shits doesn’t seem like a bridge too far. But I want to see how this is done. What in the FUCK is a Modelland toilet, I ask you. What is it made from? Does it function, at all, in its capacity as a waste receptacle and disposal unit? Because I see a desk here that does not seem to serve any purpose, even though the purpose of a desk must be amongst the simplest purposes in the wold: providing a flat surface on which things can be placed. It’s a table with an extra piece of wood on one side, and also more often a place dreams go to die, but goddamn is its purpose simple.
If no one takes a shit in this book, I’m putting it out there right now, I’ll be let down. Make me read this much nonsense and you don’t give me the one thing I want? I’ll be upset. I’m not much for entitlement, but I think I’m OWED a shit-taking in this book. Never something I thought I would say in words, but there you go. Tyra, you owe me the depiction of shit-taking in your novel.
The girls go to this spa. Nothing much happens until they come across these three ladies who can transport them into the past to relive memories. BUT THERE’S A CATCH! A VERY STUPID CATCH!
All three girls, Tookie, Dylan, and whatever must go in together, all experience each other’s memories, or not go at all. Why this is the case is inexplicable. I think if the girls had asked why, the future-seers would have broken down and said, “Look, there’s a lot of fucking dumb shit in this book that just better serves the narrative, okay? Grow up. That’s how this book works.”
They all decide to go, which seems like a mistake afterwards.
What does Dylan relive?
She’s at the park with her loving father. Who says he’s “going away for a while soon”, at which point you figure he’s dying, but I was still a little surprised when he promptly dropped fucking dead, right there in the park, seconds after telling Dylan he doesn’t have much time. Jesus, dad, how about you make this announcement when you’ve got like 6 months, not 45 seconds?
What does girl number 2 relive?
Long story short, she gets her entire extended family killed. Not really her fault, but kind of. Just enough her fault that she can blame herself, but not enough her fault that any reader can blame her. Oh, there is one survivor, a little girl, who has since disappeared.
What does Tookie relive?
A moment when she was a baby and her parents actually loved her. Which could be a good memory except she doesn’t actually remember it, and it mostly causes anguish because it’s like “What the fuck happened to make these people so bitter?”
I guess they don’t have stories about genies in this world, because aren’t we all aware that asking a genie character for something means you get a fucked-up version of what you asked for? Genies are such wise-asses. They know goddamn well that when you ask for a set of wheels, you don’t mean that you want your legs to turn into Bridgestones. They’re just so bored? Is that it?
And now the story leaves our hero for a moment. Not without a clumsy letter Tookie writes to her mother, which begins, “You probably can’t believe it, but I’ve been in Modelland for three whole months.”
You. Motherfuckers.
You made me go through 50% of this book to get through like 4 days, and now the FIRST THREE MONTHS of Modelland (minus day 1 and 2) are just tossed aside? The only detail we get is about a class called GustGape, which is a class about “how to keep [y]our eyes open even in extreme winds.”
Well, if I’ve ever disrespected models, let me take this moment to tell you, I get it now. The struggle is real. TOO real, if you ask me. Having to keep your eyes open in high wind. That’s definitely a feat, and something that probably requires instruction. It’s certainly not something you’d just like, do when the moment arose.
And is that really a class you’d take in your first quadmester at Modelland? They don’t want to teach you, I don’t know, how to avoid being sued when you throw your cell phone at someone, or assault like 11 different people, or your personal assistant, or a couple cops at the airport? How to blow rails off a Lana Del Ray album that you bought on vinyl because it seemed right and also because to blow rails off of? How to pretend you’re having fun on one of the stupid celebrity game night shows. Seriously, how low is that? We’ve now eschewed even the low-level of excitement provided by BOARD GAMES in favor of watching famous people play the very same board games. Finally, board games without all the hassle of playing and learning rules and not looking at Blake Shelton.
Anyway, post-letter (a letter Tookie writes to her mom, Creamy, who she hates and has no reason to contact) we’re transported to the Diabolical Divide, the chasm that separates Modelland from the rest of the world. Here we meet a man named Kamata, a guide who takes on the dangerous job of leading pilgrims across the divide and into Modelland. This is apparently a journey attempted by many who are not selected on TDOD (The Day of Discovery).
Everyone collected at the non-Modelland side of the divide hands over wads of cash, Kamata makes them swallow a big bag of pills and take a shot in the butt to protect from whatever awaits in the divide, and the group is about to leave when two travelers come running up…
Creamy de La Creme and Myrracle! Tookie’s mother and sister!
They’re going to make the dangerous trek to Modelland to…I don’t actually know. I’m not sure what happens when they get there. Maybe they’re going to remove Tookie? Try and get Myrracle in? I mean, that’s like me walking to Google headquarters, and then they’re like, “Well, we skipped over selecting you before in our interview process, but you walked here. That has nothing to do with the job, but we really have no choice but to make you a member of the team.”
Anyway, I read the first line of the next chapter, and it starts like this:
“Our most unusual tale picks up at the start of the next Modelland quadmester, three months at four days into the Bellas’ first year at the unusual, untouchable, and never uneventful fantastical land at the top of the mountain…”
I…
By my reckoning, we had something like 3 days in the regular world at the book’s outset. Then TDOD and the first day in Modelland seem to be one, as the girls don’t have beds until the end of that first night. Then we have day two in Modelland. Then we skip 3 months ahead, have this brief scene, then skip 4 more days ahead.
5 days of this book happen in approximately 50% of the text. Then we have 3 months that are not present AT ALL, we skip this crucial period, but whatever.
That doesn’t bother me as much as why the fuck we need to skip 3 months, then an additional FOUR DAYS? What the hell for? What’s the difference? Who gives a shit about four days? Why would that matter AT. ALL? “No, we go 90 days forward, then this tiny scene, then another…4 days sounds good.”
This whole fucking thing could have been accomplished with a “3 Months Later…”, but no, we had to add those four days. I’d still be mad about the three months later, I’d still be confused why the part we skip is probably the most interesting part of the book thus far, meanwhile I got an explanation of why a girl calls her diary FUCKINGBALLSSHITASS T-Mail Jail, but you can’t at least do me the human courtesy of skipping 90 days and then giving it a rest without going another 4?
Damn this book.