Franken!Review: Beaches

TITLE: Beaches
AUTHOR: Iris Ranier Dart
ORIGINAL DATE OF REVIEW: July 14, 2004
GENRE: Fiction and Literature
SUMMARY: Loudmouthed, redheaded Cee Cee Bloom has her sights set on Hollywood. Bertie White, quiet and conservative, dreams of getting married and having children. In 1951, their childhood worlds collide in Atlantic City. Keeping in touch as pen pals, they reunite over the years ... always near the ocean.

Powerful and moving, this novel follows Cee Cee and Bertie's extraordinary friendship over the course of thirty years as they transform from adolescents into adults. A bestselling novel that became a hugely successful film, Beaches is funny, heartbreaking, and a tale that should be a part of every woman's library.

SHE-WHO-READS'S COMMENTS: recently finished reading Beaches by Iris Rainer Dart. I'd seen the movie before -- multiple times, in fact -- but I had never read the book. It was really good! I was immediately drawn in to the world of the novel; despite the fact that I already knew the basic outline of the story (if not all the details -- they changed quite a bit from what I remember from the movie), I found this book to be a compulsive page-turner. Cee Cee Bloom is a wonderful character to read about, loud-mouthed, brash, insanely talented, insecure, and just really good-hearted underneath it all. I found Bertie to be less compelling -- the most interesting thing about her was her death (okay...that was harsh. True, but harsh) -- but still a good, strong, EveryWoman-type character, who kept the story moving forward. A great depiction of a true friendship.

When I first started to get to the sad parts at the end, I was in a restaraunt, reading and eating lunch. I had to keep telling myself sternly, "Don't cry. You're in a public place. Don't cry." But I cried anyway.

Well, it was sad. That's one thing the book and the movie both have in common -- they're both tearjerkers!