The Whore of Babylon A Memoir A Novel Katrina Prado 9781441596277 Books
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The Whore of Babylon A Memoir A Novel Katrina Prado 9781441596277 Books
A quick read that will register with any mother via the uncomfortable territory of the child-gone-wrong tale. Prado's prose and plotting have a real-life flavor to them that forces a personal resonance. You'll find yourself wishing you could call Margot and give her some support as she spirals down the rabbit hole of loss. This is a story about all the uncomfortable things a family will avoid, the lengths it will go to keep avoiding them, and the consequences of that avoidance. But there is also redemption that weaves its way into the plot. That's my favorite part of the story: the real-world mess of life and how a little thread of hope will keep you hanging on even when everything is falling apart, sometimes without your even knowing it.Product details
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The Whore of Babylon A Memoir A Novel Katrina Prado 9781441596277 Books Reviews
This is a conscience raising book about the evils of exploitation especially of the young in our society. The author spins a believable story of a dysfunctional family suffering from marital stress, financial woes, and alcoholism mixed with the lack of coping skills to deal with adolescent rebellion. The teenager Robyn resents the family's move from Aztec NM to Frisco. She also suffered from ADD and was and was an underachiever in school. This mix created a perfect storm and rendered the daughter vulnerable to predators. This is a believable tale of heartbreak experienced by many American families. It was a good read and provided a glimpse of a real societal evil that swallows up many young lives every year. I recommend it. The author also includes the notion of religious faith as a way of confronting societal evil with understanding and compassion, a factor strangely absent in many novels.I found this contributed to the realism.
I read this book while stashed on a couch during a friend's crisis. And while it's not the worst thing I've read in years, it's also not exactly what I'd call stellar fiction. This is not a memoir. This is not a truth-in-fiction. It's just Reader's Digest bad storytelling.
The issues I have with the book are that the novel struts between unbelievable characters and financial situations to swing back to ridiculous stereotypes within seconds. I'm absolutely positive that there are indeed people out there with these issues, but the incredibly poor characterization (the husband is a loutish drunk who doesn't care about anything but sex and booze; the daughter is a rebellious trollop with a mouth who gets herself hooked on drugs / prostitution; the mother is a worrying saint who hits the streets dedicated to proving how much of a bad mother she isn't, with a nun in tow who's completely progressive and wants to make sure that these young women are a-ok and nobody judges them...) made me stop, and every so often lean back, thinking...
"Oh hey now, that's about as subtle as a pink elephant standing on a street corner in a miniskirt with a sign around her neck saying 'Subtle'."
If the pimp wasn't as ridiculously stereotypical as you could get outside of throwing him into some striped pants, a set of platform heels, ball-fringe around his car windows and "La Bamba" on the stereo in an 8-track cassette, I might have given Ms. Prado a pass on this one. But as it stands, even if this IS a memoir, Ms. Prado made a complete hash out of it.
The book could have been summed up in two sentences "Don't let your babies wear miniskirts and become prostitutes. If they do, feel really, really guilty about it." The only consoling feature of this book was that it was painful enough to read that it took my mind off of the situation I was in; I could focus on how utterly crappy and unbelievable the book was to distract myself from the family crisis going on around me just long enough to stay sane. Otherwise, nick another star.
Also, for a book that's 160 pages long, the insanity of the pricepoint on is also a little much. I'm rather glad the copy I was reading was a paperback, albeit a paperback with scribbled notes, including a grocery list written on and torn out of one page. Fortunately, it wasn't an important part of the book.
So yes, it's a rather bad book. It's rather poorly written, and it follows the same tropes as most Dateline NBC true life stories on prostitution. But at least it kept me from thinking about full blown renal failure for about two hours.
Edited to note
I realized that even a horrible book has some entertainment value, but that doesn't make it any less of a horrible book. Therefore the review changed from two stars to one star.
Since there weren't any reviews of this book (or really information about what it is about) when I looked, I thought I'd add one. Wasn't sure if this was worth picking up or not at the used book store, but glad I did.
By far not a literary masterpiece, but for whatever reason I couldn't put it down. I devoured this book in a night (ok, so it's only 160 pages, so it's not an impossible feat).
It's basically a book from the mother's point of view. About her rebellious teenage daughter, who runs away and gets mixed up in prostitution, her relationship with her husband that's starting to unravel, and her determination. Even though it states "memoir" I believe it is a work of fiction.
As teenagers, I think all of us had a little bit of rebellious Robyn in us. Not to that extreme, but I know I stayed out late, pushed the envelope of what I could get away with at that age. Fortunately I never found myself in a dangerous situation.
As parents/adults, I think we can all relate to Robyn's mother (name escapes me, sorry) and her attempts to make things right in the world, even though she's not always making the right choices and decisions, but everything falls apart around her.
KIRKUS REVIEW
Prado's latest novel centers on a mother who embarks on a mission to rescue her daughter from the mean streets of San Francisco. Margot Skinner can't bear to see her 15-year-old daughter, Robyn, dolled up in fishnets and spiked heels while her room devolves into a sty and her truancy and rebelliousness accelerate...Aided by two private investigators and a streetwise nun, Margot scours the notorious Tenderloin district in search of her runaway daughter, who may have fallen into the clutches of a local pimp named Blu Boy....Prado writes in a visceral present tense, elevating her drama with crisp, sensory details, as she skillfully employs the solid pacing and atmosphere of a crime novel....Prado commands a robust vocabulary and tells a searing tale laced with disturbingly candid insight...This taut mix of memoir, novel and crime drama succeeds through vivid writing and soulful revelations.
A quick read that will register with any mother via the uncomfortable territory of the child-gone-wrong tale. Prado's prose and plotting have a real-life flavor to them that forces a personal resonance. You'll find yourself wishing you could call Margot and give her some support as she spirals down the rabbit hole of loss. This is a story about all the uncomfortable things a family will avoid, the lengths it will go to keep avoiding them, and the consequences of that avoidance. But there is also redemption that weaves its way into the plot. That's my favorite part of the story the real-world mess of life and how a little thread of hope will keep you hanging on even when everything is falling apart, sometimes without your even knowing it.
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