Friday Memes - Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader and The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick. 325 p. Scholastic Press/ Scholastic Inc., April, 2013. 9780545464260.

Publisher synopsis: A book that will make you see yourself clearly for the first time.

When Becky Randle's mother dies, she's whisked from her trailer park home to New York. There she meets Tom Kelly, the world's top designer, who presents Becky with an impossible offer: He'll design three dresses to transform the very average Becky into the most beautiful woman who ever lived.

Soon Becky is remade as Rebecca - pure five-alarm hotness to the outside world and an awkward mess of cankles and split ends when she's alone. With Rebecca's remarkable beauty as her passport, soon Becky's life resembles a fairy tale. She stars in a movie, VOGUE calls, and she starts to date Prince Gregory, heir to the English throne. That's when everything crumbles. Because Rebecca aside, Becky loves him. But the idea of a prince looking past Rebecca's blinding beauty to see the real girl inside? There's not enough magic in the world.

Defiant, naughty, and impossibly fun, GORGEOUS answers a question that bewilders us all: Just who the hell IS that in the mirror?

First line: Well, first three, to give a sample of the tone. 

I grew up in what some people would call a mobile home and what other, snobbier people might call a manufactured home, but I was always fine with calling it a trailer. That's right, I said I grew up in a trailer. Fuck you.

Page 56: 
"Rocher, please, I'm not being a bitch or a snob, but there's something I have to do, right now. And I can't even really explain it but can I call you back?"

"Okay, but first you just have to answer me one thing and you have to sweat to tell me the God's honest motherfucking truth."

"What?"

"Where can I fucking buy that dress?"


Alrighty then. It's early yet so the jury's still out on middle school appropriateness. Maybe eighth grade only. But I love the voice and snark and man, am I laughing.