Rating: 5/5
Review:
Brilliant
I loved I Carried A Watermelon. I am most definitely not the target
audience; I’m a bloke in his mid-60s and I have never seen Dirty
Dancing (I had no idea what the title meant). I only tried it, with
some trepidation, because I really like Katy Brand and her work –
and I still loved it.
Katy Brand has had a
lifelong (well, since she was about 12) obsession with Dirty Dancing.
This is a long love-letter to the film, which she uses to make
extremely intelligent, thoughtful and humane points about all sorts
of things. These include the effects of dancing; father-daughter
relationships; sexism; what is good, consensual sex; class (she’s
brilliant on this) and a lot more. There is also a lot of
autobiographical stuff, which I found very interesting, too.
The thing is, Brand
is such a good writer with such an infectious enthusiasm for what she
is writing about, that it’s immensely entertaining throughout. I
even thoroughly enjoyed parts I would expect to be excluded from,
like her superb analysis of the adaptations and remakes in which she
absolutely nails what is so often wrong with modern, “bigger and
better” versions of classics, or her description of a fan weekend
at “Kellerman’s,” the setting of the film. I was right there
with her, feeling every nuance of excitement and friendship, even
though I’d never seen any of what she was talking about. The book
is a pleasure from beginning to end.
This is a hugely
entertaining book about so much more than a classic movie. If I
enjoyed it, I think anyone would and can recommend it very warmly.
(My thanks to HQ
publishers for an ARC via Netgalley.)
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