Customer Reviews

The Savage Girl

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In his first book, The Savage Girl, Alex Shakar tells the tale of four ambitious young adults attempting to conquer commercialism, and then redefine it. The main character Ursula Van Urden, breaks into the fashion industry by becoming a 'trendspotter'. Her first assignment leads her to 'the savage girl', a primitive, disgusting, and seemingly antithetical figure of commercial beauty. Ursula's discovery prompts the marketing campaign for a new product called "diet water," which soon becomes the epitome of commercial absurdity. In a humourous and thought provoking novel, Shakar explores such questions as:

Is advertising the motor behind society?

Has marketing and hype created a world where all our beliefs are based on fallacy?

Is there any real meaning in popular culture today, or is popular culture just a corporate strategm for encouraging people to spend money?

Alex Shakar creates four irresistibly intriguing characters who's attempt to conquer society's fashion engine, leads to some bizarre, yet plausible conclusions about society. The Savage Girl is a delightful and observant rebuttal of everything we think we know about the advertising industry. A ridiculously enticing book!

Trying to create an entire world between the covers is no easy task, but Mr. Shakar has managed it; "Savage Girl" is a fully-realized alternate universe, and perhaps it is a not-so-distant place. This is an earnest and noble "Novel of Ideas," steadily plotted and crisply written. The concepts raised will have you getting the book down from the shelf more than once. Highly recommended for the serious reader seeking something out of the ordinary.

Alex Shakar's first novel is an amazing ride. Since it's often easiest to describe something (or someone) new in comparison to existing standards, let's try this: He has the descriptive prowess of a Tom Robbins; the pacing and complexity of Don DeLillo; the magic of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. To be sure, there are a couple of rough edges, but his surreal Middle City and the fabulous characters that live there are not to be missed.

Using the fictional company Tomorrow Ltd, flat characters, and a few true marketing theories (including Ernest Dichter's ideas regarding propaganda,) Shakker exploits "american-style marketing" as a dark, sinister plot against culture. This is a glass-half-empty look at consumer motivation versus company's goals. After finishing the novel, one realizes the reason we continue to read it is the thought provoking and clever ideas Shakker offers throughout the novel. The book itself is not pulled together as a compelling read. Plot and character development are weak; however, those intrigued by social motivation will find themselves highlighting and dogearing a few pages.

Alex Shakar's first novel is an incredible (somewhat Pynchon-esqe) trip into a slightly alternate world - to a city just strange enough to separate it from any real city on earth, with high-rises on a volcano called the Black Tower, with a museum of Post-moden Art, and neighborhoods like Hipsterville. But it's a city with malls, parks, video arcades, Calvin Klein ads and very real people such as Shakar's protagnist, Ursula Van Urden, who has come to Mid City to take care of her sister, Ivy, a model who has just gone public with her suicide attempt. Ursula gets a job as a Trendspotter for Tommorrow, Ltd., working for Ivy's ex-boyfriend, Chas. Her job? To Find the Future. And bring it back to be used for marketing purposes.
Very much in line with DeLillo's White Noise, The Savage Girl exaggerates our current media and trend-obsessed world just the slightest amount necessary to make it both larger-than-true-life and eerily accurate. Chas explains to Ursula how to look for the "paradessence" of any item - the essential paradox of its promise to consumers. Coffee promises to be stimulating and relaxing. Ice cream promises to be a sinful treat and a trip to the innocence of our childhood. It's a dead-on picture of marketing and advertising that Shakar presents and the world, presented in sketches of the population and places of Mid City, as lively and diverse as New York or San Francisco.
The strength of the novel also lies in Shakar's remarkable characters who continue to surprise and grow throughout the book. I became genuinely attached to Javier, the wide-eyed prophet of The Light Age who rollerblades Ursula through the ropes of Trendpotting.
An intensely readable, remarkable book.

One of the most enjoyable books I've read all year. To think, I was almost put-off by the 'science-fiction'angle. Shakar has an uncanny ability to bring the reader almost to the point of disgust with our human race, while maintaining an acute awareness of human tenderness and humor. In addition, and perhaps more to the point, it's quite a funny book. Looking forward to seeing more from this guy.

This look at a fictional society in a fictional city is filled with unlikable characters doing unlikable things to take advantage of the unlikable lifestyle of the fictional world created by Shakar.

That being said, I kept turning the pages because of the draw of his created world that I wanted to believe would have no draw. I so wanted the light but dark (dark in light?) ways of the Middle City to explode rather than take control. I also wanted the characters to explode (figuratively, of course) rather than become the norm in this world of the not-so-distant past that could have been/could still be the future.

It may be only the result of chance that Shakar's world isn't the present. As we wander through his Consumerville, we can shake our collective heads and keep reading quickly so we don't ask ourselves about our own lives. It's easier to be critical of a created world that is a ramped up version of the overmarketing of everything.

Written in 2001, this is slightly dated. My memory isn't good enough to compare the details of his world with the one a decade ago. However, the "feel" of things is kind of spooky. Enough of this cautionary story is still applicable to today to make this a worthwhile take to read.

I am looking forward to reading his 2011 book "Luminarium".

Luminarium

I just read this book, because I learned about it in this essay by the author, Alex Shakar, about his brief rise to fame in 2001, just before the release of "The Savage Girl":

[...]

In the essay, Shakar talks about how he was becoming a minor celebrity in the literary world, only for his novel to be released the same week as Sept. 11. Since the novel is about consumerism, irony, cultural tourism, and a lot of somewhat "negative" and "anti-business" ideas that were floating around in the 1990s, it wasn't super popular in the days following Sept. 11. I recommend reading Shakar's essay linked to above, and this book as well, if you're interested in Gen X culture, the 1990s in America, advertising, stealth marketing, trendspotting, etc.

Savage Girl entices with its begining and middle but loses its momentum in the end. Mr. Shakar creates engaging characters. His gift for creating gorgeous ideas that translate well into words is astouding. Still, there is alot of wading through extraneous information. Maybe he is trying to hard to impress which struck me as being in direct opposition to the novel's central core.

Similarly beautiful ideas to Infinite Jest in one-fourth the pages. Similar in that they both explore sanity and affected society. Better in that this is a more fluid read.