Calendar Girl: In Which a Lady of Rylstone Reveals All [Paperback]

Tricia Stewart (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1585675156 | ISBN-13: 978-1585675159 | Publication Date: November 25, 2003

It was a crazy idea and good for a laugh at the time: When Tricia Stewart proposed a more risqué treatment for her local Women’s Institute’s annual calendar, which normally featured tranquil scenes from nature, laughing alongside her was John Baker, the husband of the soon-to-be Miss February, Angela. When John passed away from cancer, the Ladies of Rylstone decided that posing nude for the calendar and donating the proceeds was one way to honor his memory and cope with this devastating loss.

No one could have predicted what happened next. The calendar began to sell, and soon the whole world, it seemed, was interested in their story, with an American tour following and appearances on the Today show, 20/20, CNN, and the Tonight show. Calendar Girl explores the phenomenon that The Ladies of Rylstone became, recounting with warmth and humor the moments of an exhilarating journey that transformed the lives of the remarkable women who became international sensations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A few years ago, a certain calendar caused a worldwide stir with its tasteful nude photos of the middle-aged women of the Rylstone Women's Institute in northern England. This book, already published in the U.K. and now a feature film there, chronicles the genesis, creation and subsequent fame of the "calendar girls," told by Miss October. Stewart's recounting carries a journal-like quality, so readers may either love or hate the abundance of minutiae as they are taken through the decision of the Women's Institute, following the death of a member's husband, to create the calendar and donate the proceeds to cancer research. These details, however, reveal that life in a tiny English town can be as multidimensional and hip as life in a big American city: Stewart teaches yoga and enjoys shiatsu, meditation and tarot. She humorously describes the recruitment of the calendar girls (the youngest was 45), the photo shoots ("breathing in and trying to look unwrinkled"), getting the blessing of the national Women's Institute, and how the ladies handled the subsequent, unexpected fame. The only drama concerns the author's belief throughout that her marriage was deteriorating and the strain of their increasing renown ("before the calendar, I could never understand why groups like the Beatles or the Spice Girls split up"). Although the women experience a tiny bit of shock due to their sudden celebrity, their relationships are ultimately what's important, as evidenced by the author's reconciliation with her husband. In the end, this is more than a "making of" story: it's a reminder of the beauty and power of women's friendships. 21 b&w photos.
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Review

'Riveting' Valerie Grove, Times --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Press (November 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585675156
• ISBN-13: 978-1585675159
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,289,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Transcribed, not written, January 6, 2004

By 

Christine Quiriy (Littleton, MA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Calendar Girl: In Which a Lady of Rylstone Reveals All (Paperback)

I wanted to like this book; I love what those women did. I had heard about the calendar in 2000, and then while visiting England last autumn, I heard about the movie. While visiting England again at Christmas, I was given the book as a gift and was pleasantly surprised. However, because of a lack of narrative, the book is eventually unreadable; it reads like a word-for-word transcription of Ms. Stewart's diary. Some of the words are very funny -asides in conversation transcribed- but there aren't enough of them. And, without a thread of a story to lead the reader along, I lost interest; I hadn't made it halfway through before giving up and skipping to the epilogue.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars 1 start should be 0 stars, June 23, 2005

By 

E. Northrop (MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Calendar Girl: In Which a Lady of Rylstone Reveals All (Paperback)

I should've listened to the other reviewers here before I bothered with this book. I bought it at a discount book store ($5 wasted) and thought I could find something in it that others couldn't. Wrong. By page 30 the author had said the word "brilliant" about 18 times and indeed rattled on incessantly about insignificant, painstaking details.

The movie version (Calendar Girls) of this book, however, was charming and highly recommended. First time I've ever said that the book sucked but the movie was great.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars No front bottoms, August 16, 2004

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Calendar Girl: In Which a Lady of Rylstone Reveals All (Paperback)

In 2003, American audiences were treated to CALENDAR GIRLS, a little gem of a film starring Helen Mirren based on the experiences a group of women in their 40s, 50s and 60s in the north of England who posed starkers for a year 2000 calendar to raise money for leukemia research, and in memory of John Baker, the husband of one of the ladies and a locally well-regarded and much loved Assistant National Park Officer in the Yorkshire Dales, who'd died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in July 1998. Of course, the nudity, both in the film and on the calendar, was tastefully presented, with the naughty bits obscured and most definitely "no front bottoms". The calendar's concept, and the driving force behind its creation, came from Tricia Stewart, a close friend of John and Angela Baker. In real life, Tricia ran a medical software company with her husband, Ian, and taught yoga and Pilates on the side. This book, CALENDAR GIRL, is Tricia's story of the 2-year flurry of frenetic activity that the calendar catalyzed, and the roughly 300,000 copies that were sold in Britain and the United States.

First of all, let me unequivocally state that the film adaptation was wonderful, and I deeply admire author Alicia Stewart for the originality of her idea and for the hard work and dedication she and her colleagues demonstrated in getting the calendar created and marketed. What started out almost as a lark burgeoned into a monster with a life of its own - as such things are wont to do - involving a grueling schedule of domestic and foreign media interviews, appearances on television talk shows and at book-signings both at home and in the U.S., product endorsements, the film, and considerable fame. And the Leukemia Research Fund in Britain and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America received a bunch of money. It also destroyed friendships, almost administered the coup-de-grace to a marriage, and, as a final insult, subjected Tricia and Ian to hateful articles in the gutter press. However, that tribute said ...

I realized what was wrong with CALENDAR GIRL about two-thirds into it. It has the flow of a diary, and I gather that Stewart used such as the primary source for her narrative. Trouble is, she failed to edit out so very much that was trivial and, frankly, numbingly boring. As a random example of the story's "feel" , which is typical of the book throughout:

"Lynda had had an invite from Preethi, the Indian girl we'd met at the bookfair, to go to her book launch at Dover Street, by the Ritz, on Thursday night. It was the same day as a shoot in London for the "Mail's You" magazine. Lynda had sent her a calendar, which was in her office. She was having a stressful day organizing her launch and when she went in her office, the calendar fell off the shelf. So she phoned Lynda who was also miserable and the depression lifted for both of them."

Then later, when they meet this Preethi for the launch dinner:

"Sunflowers mean happiness and are Preethi's mum's favourite flower. We met her mum and dad and lots of her friends and drank champagne. Her book focuses on following your dreams, following the African dancer. Later after speeches an African dancer appeared and a band, it was brilliant."

All of the above - and so much more in a similar vein -should've been left out, but perhaps wasn't because the resulting volume wouldn't have been much more than a pamphlet in length.

I really wanted to award at least three stars because Tricia's heart is in the right place, but just couldn't because I struggled to finish CALENDAR GIRL, and was so relieved when I arrived at the last period. I highly recommend the film, but not this well-intentioned but fatally flawed book.