Once again I was treated to a book that was complete hammered shit. Now Multiple Choice by Claire Cook sounded promising. The protagonist, March Monroe, has decided to go back to college at the same time her daughter Olivia is starting her freshman year. No, they’re not going to the same college. Olivia is attending Boston University and March is attending the local community college. But things get really weird when both March and Olivia end up as interns at a local radio station. Wait, don’t most people do internships when they are seniors in college? I guess things have changed since I matriculated at my alma mater.
To say Olivia is pissed to find her mom interning at the same is a bit of an understatement. Olivia is mortified and annoyed. And she acts more like a 13-year-old going through puberty than a young woman in her first year of college. For some odd reason, the bickering between March and Olivia inspires the powers that be at the radio station to give these two their own radio show. Why the station would give two untested, inexperienced amateurs a radio show over more qualified candidates is beyond me.
March and Olivia’s show is called, “I’m Rubber, You’re Glue,” a show that’s supposed to be about the relationships between mothers and daughters. The two don’t exactly know what they are doing, and in the show doesn’t come across as very riveting. But for some reason, they are encouraged to keep doing their show and they even get photographed for a huge billboard to advertise “I’m Rubber, You’re Glue.”
March has other things going on beyond her internship and the radio show. As mentioned, March is going to college. She has a hard time connecting to her fellow students due to most of them being much younger, but she does manage to make friends with an older lady named Etta. And though March enjoys most of her classes, she’s having difficulty with her quantum physics class.
March is married to a man named Jeff and also has a son named Jackson. The Monroe family also has a bird named Flighty and a cat named Feral that somehow fit into the story, but not really.
To make some money, March works as a directionality coach, which is a pretentious way to call oneself a life coach. However, March seems to need more direction than some of her clients, especially in the way she treats one of them in a very condescending manner.
Despite March and Olivia going to school and having a radio show, nothing much happens in Multiple Choice. Just when you think the action will pick up, the story falls flat and doesn’t go anywhere. The dialogue is insipid, and many of the characters aren’t fleshed out to make them interesting. And both March and Olivia are not pleasant people who you would want to spend time with even though I’m sure Cook was writing them to be relatable. Olivia is a whiny brat and March never seems to stand up for her. March is also really judgmental towards other people. She makes snot-nosed comments about a photographer hired to take pictures of her and Olivia for the billboard. I guess March was expecting Annie Liebowitz to waste her time and talents on two nobodies.
So should you read Multiple Choice? Yes? No? The answer is easy. No!
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