Customer Reviews

A Little Change of Face (Red Dress Ink Novels)

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A LITTLE CHANGE OF FACE by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
September 22, 2005

Amazon Rating: 4/5 stars

In A LITTLE CHANGE OF FACE by Lauren Baratz-Logsted, a woman decides to change her image from a beauty to a plain Jane, to see if she can attract a man not for her looks, but for what is inside.

This was my introduction to Baratz-Logsted's books, and I have to say I enjoyed this one. A LITTLE CHANGE OF FACE is not your typical chick lit novel. The premise is a bit off the wall, but I feel that the author made it work. Scarlett Jane Stein has always been known for her good looks and great body, but she's tired of being judged by her appearances. She decides it's time to make a change, so she goes from beautiful to plain Jane, even changing her job and moving to a new town to complete the process.

As Lettie Shaw, she is now a dowdy old maid, and she is no longer attracting the people she did in the past when she was a beauty. With the help of her `default' best friend Pam, Lettie is as plain as can be.

Scarlett (Lettie) finds out what it's like to live like the other half - to have to make an impression on other people without having to use her body. But she also learns a bit about friendship and people through this experiment. This was chick lit with a little bit more, and A LITTLE CHANGE OF FACE may be a book that not everyone will "get", but I felt it was a well-written book, very witty and funny, and will be reading the rest of Lauren's books in the near future.

The premise of "A Little Change of Face" is that beautiful, confident Scarlett receives too much attention from men, so she alters her appearance to be less attractive. Her goal is to find out whether men are really interested in her, or just attracted by her looks.

The first problem with all this is that there's no antithesis. Nobody ever really believes - nobody ever even argues, and I can't think of any reason why they should - that men will *not* stop constantly hitting on Scarlett, and buying her drinks in bars and asking her out under no provocation, if she cuts her hair very short, wears ugly glasses, and dons long, baggy dresses to hide her gorgeous figure. From the beginning, the novel conflates this sort of empty and surface-oriented attention with the (generally) deeper regard signified by friendship and real romantic interest. Even Scarlett seems to have no opinon at all on the subject; she seems barely notice the attention she receives, and she has no boyfriend or close male friend at the start of the novel to give another perspective.

So Scarlett goes through a sort of reverse physical blossoming. In the process she changes her name to Lettie, sabotages her career by moving to a lower-level position in a different town, and gives up her condominium to rent a less showy home. She decides to revise not only her appearance but her entire personality, remaking herself as the self-effacing, unglamorous person she imagines a dowdy, bespectacled Lettie would be. This explicit assumption that a less beautiful woman would be less outgoing and sociable is a circular proof of the hypothesis that as an average-looking woman Scarlett will receive less notice. She goes through the usual contortions of trying to attract the most gorgeous and shallow of the men she meets and - in a bit of poetic justice apparently unnoticed by its recipient - manages to develop, for the first time, a personality not based on long hair and big breasts.

Whatever "A Little Change of Face" is supposed to be, it fails. Its agenda - which is both overworked and unpleasant - hampers its enjoyability as fluff. But its desire to be fluff (in accordance with its Red Dress Ink label) hinders its ability to be interesting in any other way. This is really too bad, as the author is obviously talented. She manages to turn a shell of a plot and a few barely-there characters into a marginally pleasant, absorbing three-hundred page book. And she has certainly tapped into some interesting questions of style versus substance, how much of who we are is influenced by how we look, and the importance of physicality to self-concept and our interactions with friends, coworkers, and lovers. Few novels manage to wrestle successfully with this issue, though, and most of them are much more complex than this immature anti-Cinderella tale.

This is my second of Lauren's novels to read, and I'm beginning to know what to expect from her -- gleeful wit, sweet yet wacky heroines, and characters who do the most illogical things for very logical reasons. With creations that lie in that intersection between completely relatable and unbelievably insane, we laugh and sympathize with her protagonists even as we gawk in shock at their actions. A Little Change of Face is no different, the main character, tired of superficial attention for being so beautiful decides to give herself an inverted makeover and see how her life changes. Along her adventure, we see how the protagonist, Scarlett, and her alter-ego, Lettie hierarchize her best friends (the real best friend, the default best friend) as many women secretly do, get a satiracal view into pseudo-intellectual women's books clubs, and are privty to her by turns insightful, juvenile, and keyed-up reactions to men. It is the treatment of Lettie's friends that seems to draw the most flack in this book. If it matters, I am Black, among other things, and I found T.B. to be satire, which means, if you think her role in the book as the non-standard English talking accessory is racist, you're right! Lauren is showing how the use of minority characters as marginalized, cliched stereotypes is wrong, so she names the character T.B. so that we acknowledge the character as an unjust creation. It would be more racist to have called the character Susan or Molly and acted as if her stereotypical behavior was meant as realism -- like, for example, the indigenous and black people in the works of Isabel Allende. Then we would too be a party to racist behavior by reading the book without any sense of the problematic. I suggest that people who don't like this book b/c of T.B. watch Spike Lee's Bamboozled. This black director creates a blackface show in his movie not to say blackface is okay but to skewer, through satire, stereotypical black television. This book is indeed a little change of face, it's warm, witty, joyful chick-lit that decides to get a bit political. A worthy read.

Once again Baratz-Logsted uses quirky wit and razor-sharp observations to getting is thinking about our appearance-obsessed society. Her heroine, Scarlett Stein, is blessed with good looks but they seem to be attracting the wrong men. Linda Howard wrote a book about the frumpy librarian who gets a makeover. This book is about the beautiful librarian who goes dowdy. It's a fun twist, a great read and a good beach book.

Thirty-nine-year-old librarian Scarlett Jane Stein (named after Scarlett O'Hara, of course) is drop-dead gorgeous. She is a petite brunette with a slim, fit bod and perfect breasts. Men line up at bars to buy her drinks. In short, Scarlett has no idea how the other side of life -- the plain or simply ugly side -- lives, and her "Default Best Friend" Pam makes sure she does. She challenges Scarlett to look as unattractive and unappealing as possible to see if men still like her. Scarlett agrees to do it; she wants to know if men want her for her personality and not just because of her breasts. So Scarlett turns into Lettie Shaw -- a plain woman who wears thick glasses, shapeless dresses and a boyish haircut. With her new persona, she meets two attractive men, Saul and Steve. One is a superficial jerk, the other one is Mr. Boy Next Door. Will Scarlett/Lettie know the difference? In her misguided Extreme-Makeover-in-reverse experiment, she discovers not only how others perceive her and women's looks in general, but how she sees herself.

I get what the author tries to do with this book. I can appreciate how different this is from cookie-cutter chick-lits out there. Most of the characters aren't very likable (especially Pam. What a petty, jealous person! And how on earth did Scarlett not see through her?), including the heroine, whom I had a hard time identifying with for most of the novel. The only thing she and I have in common is that we love books... and that we're both vertically challenged (I, too, am only five feet tall)... and we're brown-eyed brunettes... and the breasts thing rings a bell. Okay, okay, so we do have a few things in common, but the similarities end there. I appreciate her personality flaws and the fact that she cannot see what is so patently obvious. We've all been there at some point in our lives. The thing is that I liked the premise, appreciated the message, but disliked the execution. I couldn't get into this novel, which is a shame, for Lauren Baratz-Logsted is a talented writer. I LOVED her novel Vertigo and I really wanted to love this one too. Alas, I didn't. One of the chapters starts out with something along the lines of, "I bet you're dying to know about my breasts." Uh, no! Have lunch with one of your friends and have her talk to you about her breasts and see how fun that is. Only men would find the aforementioned topic interesting. Anyway, I bought How Nancy Drew Saved My Life and I have my fingers crossed, hoping that book will be better than this one.

Is there one person out there that doesn't know a Cinderella story when they hear it? Take one plain girl, make her beautiful, and the handsome prince comes along. Well....Lauren Baratz-Logsted did just the opposite!! She took a remarkably beautiful woman named Scarlett and turned her plain to see if men would still be interested! Is beauty really only skin deep? Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder? When Scarlett's "friend" tells her in no uncertain terms that she gets everything she wants because she's beautiful, she decides to prove her wrong. She decides a change is in order: new hair, new clothes, new job...even a new name, Lettie. Now, in the real world would this EVER happen? Who knows? But it makes for a quirky, funny and amazingly honest book! Loved it!

The premise of the story is that 40-ish Scarlett Stein decides to make herself dowdier in order to prove to her friend (Pam) that men like her for who she is not what she looks like.

The newness of the storyline wore off around the 5th chapter, and I started skimming around the 7th chapter. The story had so much promise but it ended up falling flat. The characters were shallow, selfish, and acted like they were in high school. Try as I might I just couldn't put forth the effort to finish this book cover to cover. One main reason is I dislike reading a book about women (most of which were going on 40 years old) acting like a bunch of immature 10th graders. That was the biggest turn off for me.

I had planned on reading "The Thin Pink Line" by the author also, but I think I'll set it aside for now. I don't know if I can take it.

I like the idea of a reversed trend, like from swan to ugly duckling because it's different from the other chick lit books out there. However, this book is different. The characters are not that likable ~~ especially the Default Best Friend, who urged the main character, Scarlet, to reform herself into an ugly duckling. Pam, the Default Best Friend, said she was just trying to help Scarlet in order to find out if men really like her just for herself. From the beginning, the reader knows that Pam has an ulterior motive behind this reasoning ~~ she's just plain jealous of Scarlet and her success with men.

However, Scarlet begins to think perhaps Pam has a point. After all, she is 39 and still hasn't found The True Love. So intrigued and perhaps a little bit bored with her life, she uproots herself into a neighboring town, got a job at the local library and changed her name and looks.

It's a cute idea ~~ and this book would be delightful if it weren't for all the whining going on in there ~~ and if the characters weren't so self-absorbed. It is a quick read ~~ fun to read while at the beach or in the bathtub ~~ but her book, Crossing the Line, is definitely the best one yet.

1-24-06

I really liked this. Even though the premise was a bit 'out there', I think I can see where the author wants to push the envelope to get her points across. I found that while reading it, I reexamined my own friendships, thankful that those who i surround myself with are real true friends who would only want good things for me. I have had my share of toxic friends and this book really brought home how damaging they can be. I liked Scarlett's character even though i did want to slap her and tell her to smarten up.

Start first with the heroine's name. Scarlett Jane Stein. Scarlett's
mother keeps telling her she will come to love the name as she gets older.
Scarlett is still waiting for the joy of being named after one of the
world's most notorious characters.
Scarlett is beautiful, thin, and heaven forbid, large breasted, so
naturally when she and her friends go out, the lion's share of attention
goes to her. Scarlett decides she is tired of attracting attention for all
the wrong reasons, meaning the wrong men. After all, she is a librarian.
Yes, a librarian!

Scarlett decides to change her appearance by becoming a woman with less
allure; in fact, a nondescript, no make-up, dowdy clothed unnoticeable one
and go on with her life without being hassled ,and ,most importantly, make
her friends happy to be in her company.

Once again Lauren Baratz-Logsted brings to this book her wit, humor, and
quirky characters this reader finds delightful. If you enjoyed The Thin Pink
Line and Crossing the Line, you will enjoy this book. If you have not read
her previous books, you are in for a treat.