The Digested Twenty-first Century

by John Crace

Clare: Someone else you won’t care about is having an affair. Gosh! And now I’ve discovered the Averys are planning to use their garage as an extension. I’m going to threaten to expose his affair with Virginie.

  Mimi: As I’ve got no money at all, I’ve just been shopping at Lidgates before going to Cornwall for six weeks. I do wish Si would call.

  Clare: Bob Avery just laughed when I told him I knew about Virginie, but at least I told Woody Allen he couldn’t film in the gardens. Guess what, Anouska, the gorgeous teacher from Ponsonby prep, has been seen with Si! Don’t tell anyone this, because it would spoil what little plot there is, but Ralph and I have hatched two secret plans together.

  Mimi: A supermodel saw me in my tracksuit bottoms and I’m now just over nine stone. How can I ever face the world again?

  Clare: The couple you don’t care about are back together. Ah! I’ve also got to put up a trellis to block out the Averys’ view of the gardens. That’ll show them. Mimi mustn’t find out about mine and Ralph’s plans.

  Mimi: I overheard Virginie talking in a cod-French accent in Myla, saying, ‘Zees lingerie ees for my girlfriend.’ She’s having an affair with Bob’s wife!

  Clare: Hooooooray, I’m pregnant, thanks to Ralph and the turkey baster. Mimi must never find out.

  Mimi: My life is at an end. Si is getting married to Anouska and Ralph has found out about my affair. He’s punished me by selling our house to Clare for more than £2m and we’re moving to Dorset.

  Clare: Phew! Mimi still hasn’t found out about me and Ralph.

  Mimi: Dorset isn’t so bad after all, even if you can’t go shopping, and I never felt really at home with all those multimillionaires. If this was a Richard Curtis film this would be the closing scene where he panned back from the Square. But it’s not. It’s even worse.

  Digested read, digested: The media finally eats itself.

  Handle with Care

  by Jodi Picoult (2009)

  Charlotte: I called you Willow. Though it’s the readers who would be Weeping by the end. But not because they were sad. I felt as broken as you when Piper, the gynaecologist, saw the 28-week scan and told me you had osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), a rare condition where your bones snap easily and you never grow taller than three foot. I was so happy, though, when she told me you had Type III and you wouldn’t die at birth but would have a short painful life and then die. Otherwise I wouldn’t have a story.

  Amelia: I’m your older half-sister. My Mom had been a single-parent before she met Sean and had you. My bits are going to show you that OI also creates difficult issues for siblings.

  Sean: I’m a tough-guy cop, so I didn’t cry when you were born. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of difficult feelings boiling inside me. I want you to know that Charlotte completed me and we both wanted you very much. We once took you to Disneyworld where you broke your femur and the staff arrested us on suspicion of child abuse. People don’t understand OI is a condition that raises many complex issues, all of which you are going to hear of at unimaginable length.

  Charlotte: You were a genius, which is another symptom of OI, I read on Wikipedia. Sean wanted to sue Disneyworld, but the lawyer told us their staff had only been doing their job, which relieved Jodi no end as otherwise the book might have been injuncted. But the lawyer did tell us we could sue Piper, who had missed signs of OI at the 18-week scan.

  Marin: I was adopted and I don’t know who my birth mother is. This means I have very difficult personal issues in dealing with Charlotte, who may not have wanted her baby – but as her lawyer I am trying to be very professional about it.

  Sean: Marin says it is very fortunate that we live in New Hampshire as it is one of the few states that allows wrongful birth suits. Jodi thinks it is even more fortunate we live in New Hampshire. Charlotte and I are arguing. I don’t think we should sue Piper because she was your best friend and we were planning to keep you anyway. These difficult issues are tearing the family apart.

  Charlotte: Abortion is a very difficult question and I don’t quite know how to answer it, as I want to keep my dilemmas open. I would just like to have had the option, not that I would have gone through with it because I don’t want to alienate the Pro-Life brigade and in any case I love you very much. Will that do? Did I also mention I’m a Catholic?

  Amelia: No one’s been paying me any attention for a while, so I’ve become bulimic.

  Sean: Mummy and I are getting divorced, but we still love you very much. I am testifying against her because I don’t think we should sue Piper because you might think it means we wish you were dead. I’ve also kissed Piper, but don’t tell anyone.

  Charlotte: You have been having fun at an OI convention because it’s important to remember that people with OI can lead fulfilling lives. Daddy and I are separating but he slept with me last night. I felt as if I was a vine. Apparently. I’m suing Piper not because I don’t love you but because I want you to have some money.

  Amelia: No one’s been paying me any attention for a while, so I’ve now started cutting myself. By the way, you’ve also broken a few limbs at key moments to heighten the drama. Such as it is.

  Marin: One of the jurors turned out to be my birth mother. She gave me away because she had been raped. Fancy that! Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to judge Charlotte. Especially as the jury has awarded her $8m.

  Willow: Mum and Dad are back together and have lost all their friends. Whoops, I’ve fallen through the ice and have died. I should have done this 500 pages ago.

  Jodi: Looks like I’m going to pocket the $8m then.

  Digested read, digested: Charlotte takes the money; you should just run.

  Fifty Shades of Grey

  by EL James (2011)

  ‘I’ve got a cold and I can’t interview Christian Grey, the enigmatic multimillionaire tycoon, for the student newspaper today,’ says Kate, my roommate. ‘Please take my place, Ana.’

  Wow! I take one look at Mr Grey and can barely speak. With his tousled hair, he is so mouthwateringly gorgeous. The epitome of male beauty. ‘G-gosh,’ I say.

  ‘You seem to be struck dumb, Miss Steele,’ he wryly observes. ‘I like that in a woman.’

  On the way home, my cell phone rings.

  ‘Come to dinner,’ says Christian.

  ‘How did you know my number?’

  ‘It’s my business to know everything. I like to exercise control. My helicopter will pick you up at seven.’

  I am unable to resist. No man has ever affected me in this way before.

  ‘Here’s the contract for our relationship,’ he says, slipping an oyster down my throat. ‘I will be the Dominant and you will be the Submissive. You will do everything I say and allow me to cane you, tie you up, sodomise you, clamp your genitals and fist you. In return I will buy you a car and a laptop.’

  ‘But Sir,’ I exclaim. ‘I’m still a virgin, so I will have to draw the line at fisting.’

  ‘You drive a hard bargain, Miss Steele.’

  My inner goddess melts as he forces his tongue inside me. I have never been this wet before, etc. He bends me over his knee and slaps me hard. It feels wrong, but somehow very right. His enormous penis, etc. Juddering orgasms, etc.

  ‘Sleep with me, Sir,’ I beg, as I try to draw his handsome body closer to mine.

  ‘I can’t. I had a deeply disturbed childhood and S&M relationships are the only ones I can sustain.’

  ‘Tell me about your commitment problems.’

  ‘They are too disturbing. You will find I am 50 Shades of Grey. Yet I find myself strangely drawn to your virginal, 20-year-old body in a way that I have never previously experienced.’

  My subconscious tells me I should run away from this control freak right now, but my inner goddess is telling me to stay. That I can help this poor troubled man. Christian changes into a sexy pair of faded denim jeans and leads me to his Red Room of Pain. I willingly allow myself to be chained to a crucifix while he thrashes my clitoris with a leather hunting crop. The pai
n is intense, but the pleasure more so. My inner goddess is panting for him not to stop until ... juddering climaxes, etc.

  ‘I wouldn’t normally allow myself to be treated like this,’ I say. ‘But somehow, Christian, it is OK with you as I can sense that one day we may have a loving relationship.’

  ‘It is the Submissive who has all the power,’ he witters, ‘and I can feel myself slowly yielding to you.’

  Oh yes please, my inner goddess yells. Does he really love me as much as Kate keeps telling me he does? And why am I so jealous of his previous Subs, and why don’t I ask him a single question about his job or his life even though we have met one another’s parents in circumstances bordering on the unbelievable?

  Submit yourself to the greatest thrashing of your life, my inner goddess says, to prove how much you love him and to let him show how much he loves you. Torn ass cheeks/moist vagina/pain/yet more juddering climaxes, etc.

  ‘I love you, yet I have to go,’ I sob.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re only going to get to the bottom of your commitment issues after you’ve spanked your way through the next two books.’

  Digested read, digested: What every woman wants. Obviously.

  Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé

  by Joanne Harris (2012)

  The lettre came on the wind of Ramadan. ‘Ma chere Vianne, mes sales have been slipping un peu and mes publishers pensent it’s a good idee if I revive mes characters from mon best-vendeur, Chocolat, pour a troisieme time. So get your witchy self along, with your deux dreary filles, back to Lansquenet as vite as possible, much amour, Joanne.’ Ooh la la! Je wondered what Roux would say, but then I remembered he never dired anything anyway. As the great Paulo Coelho once wrote: ‘Silence est souvent more articulate que mots.’ So I packed mes tarot cartes et left Paris avec Anouk et Rosette.

  Nothing is the meme in Lansquenet, Pere. A community of Algerian Muslims have moved dans Les Marauds et ont builde un mosque avec un minaret. Toute la village est en turmoil, Pere, everyone pense qu’il etait moi who burned down the ecole run by the fierce woman who jamais takes offer her niqab. Et maintenant, le vent is bringing back my old adversary, Vianne, who once set up a chocolaterie opposite mon eglise.

  The vent was warm and fast, et j’etais back en Lansquenet dans un instant. Quel horreur! The hatred and the mistrust entre les deux communautes! Je hardly recognised mon vieux manoir. Et le pauvre Cure Francis! Toute le village wants to get ridder of him parce qu’il est trop old-fashioned, mais he really a un coeur d’or. Je ne sais pas quoi I am meant to be doing ici, mes les tarots tell me to go and chat to les Muslims.

  ‘Bonjour, tout le monde. Would you like one of my succulent juicy peches?’ je dis. They respondent: ‘We were told you would bring some chocolat truffles?’ ‘Pas this time, les chocolats were a while en retard.’ ‘Jamais mind, these peches are tres bonnes, so we will tell you tout what is going on with us que we have never bothered to dire anyone else.’ As I listened, le vent grew darker.

  Oh Pere, everything est still going seins en haut. Je was walking by the river when I saw a Muslim girl, Alyssa, try to kill herself, so I rescuer her et puis tout le monde pensent que je was essaying to faire elle dans. Et maintenant, Pere, some Muslim bloke a smashed mon visage dans, et all the village aiment le trendy new cure. ‘N’inquietez pas,’ Dieu whispered.

  ‘Je comprends that it’s not votre faute que you have been dumpe in le milieu d’un second rate piece of politically correct, cosy magical realism.’

  Alyssa bit hungrily into my succulent peche. ‘Je sais it’s Ramadan et que j’ai just tried to topper moi-meme, but je cannot resist,’ elle dit. ‘Neither can nous,’ said many autres Muslim women. ‘Beaucoup de nous do not aiment being made to observer le strict Muslim orthodoxies. We want to to be Muslim and French.’

  The wind is doing its work, I thought, as I decided to rustle up a few chocolate pralines, apres tout. How I yearned for Roux and quite understood why he had fathered a child by mon old amie Josephine. En effet, je comprended tout. All je needed to faire was to talk to the mysterious Inez, the femme in the niqab.

  ‘You comprenez rien,’ elle spat. ‘Peut-etre mes tarot cartes on ete upside down.’

  Grace pour rien, Pere. J’ai just been coshed over the tete and dumped in the cellar of the gym.

  C’est un miracle. Roux a turner up out of le vent. He didn’t shag Josephine so il est tout mienne, not que Roux could ever belonger to anyone parce qu-il est un spirit libre. Et le problem avec les Muslims is sorted, washed clean by the river et le vent. Les Muslim hommes sont behaving themselves again, et everyone feels tres francais.

  Oh Pere, c’est bon que je suis still le Cure et que tous les muslims maintenant come to mon eglise. Mais please, Pere, ne letter that Vianne woman near Joanne’s keyboard encore.

  Digested read, digested: Immodium for tout le monde.

  In the Name of Love

  by Katie Price (2012)

  Then: Charlie sobbed as she knelt beside her dying horse that had been cruelly knocked down by a speeding 4x4.

  Now: ‘Come on, babes,’ said Zoe. ‘My Premier League footballer boyfriend has forgotten my birthday. So he said he would pay for me to take a friend to Barbados, and you need cheering up to get over your Premier League footballer cheating on you.’

  Charlie looked up to see a handsome, well-toned if somewhat diminutive hunk in white Speedos standing next to her sunlounger. Thank God she had had a Brazilian! ‘Hola,’ he drawled, ‘My name is Felipe-Martin di Amis. Would you like to join me on my yacht?’

  ‘You look shagged out,’ Zoe observed. Charlie smiled. The past few days had been a blur as she had never come so intensely with any other man. ‘I think I’m in love,’ she admitted, ‘though I’m not sure why I told Felipe-Martin I worked in a shop when I’m actually the world’s greatest woman writer who doesn’t actually write her own books.’

  Felipe-Martin sobbed. He had never come so intensely with any other woman, and he had believed Charlie was The One but, even though he had told her he was an ageing author rather than a Spanish aristocrat who would be competing in the three-day event at the Olympics, he couldn’t forgive her for telling him she worked in a shop when she was actually the world’s greatest woman writer who didn’t actually write her own books. He would have to end the relationship immediately.

  Neither Charlie nor Felipe-Martin had stopped crying for two months since Felipe-Martin had abruptly ended their relationship. She couldn’t believe her eyes when he walked into Chinawhite’s. How fit could a bloke be! Having come more intensely and more frequently than ever before, Felipe-Martin and Charlie lay contentedly in each other’s arms.

  ‘Do you really think we can be a couple?’ Charlie asked. ‘You are a Spanish aristocrat, while I am only a working-class girl.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly,’ Felipe-Martin cooed. ‘I have a great understanding of the lower orders myself, and you write about them in a way that is so wholly convincing.’

  ‘You do know that I don’t actually write my own books, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course, but somehow that makes you even more authentic.’

  ‘You say the sweetest things! Now give me your enormous cock again, and I will try not to let the phobia of horses that I have had since my own horse died in my arms get in the way of our relationship.’

  Charlie wept bitter tears. She adored Felipe-Martin, but she knew she just wasn’t able to overcome her problem with horses and that it would be unfair on him were she to jeopardise his chances of a gold medal. For his sake, she had to end it by pretending to go out with the footballer again.

  ‘I’ve never been so miserable in my life,’ cried Charlie and Felipe-Martin.

  ‘I know you’ve never liked me,’ said Darcy, ‘but I’ve completely changed my personality since I’ve been going out with your jailbird brother. And I think what you need is some therapy to overcome your post-traumatic stress disorder.’

  Two months later: Charlie c
ouldn’t believe the therapy had worked so well and as Felipe-Martin cleared the final fence to win a silver medal behind the British rider, she ran into the arena. ‘I love you,’ she cried. ‘And I love you, too,’ Felipe-Martin yelled, ripping off his jodhpurs and forcing himself inside her in front of the Royal Box. The Queen led the crowd’s standing ovation as the couple juddered to the most intense, simultaneous orgasm.

  ‘I always knew you would win the Nobel Prize for literature,’ gasped Felipe-Martin.

  Digested read, digested: In the name of God ...

  It by Alexa Chung (2013)

  Horses were my first love. When I was six I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wanted one. So my parents got me one. It was my first fashion accessory.

  I loved everything about the Spice Girls. Their clothes, their music, their manufactured artificiality. But I especially loved the fact they showed women could become celebrities without having any talent. Here’s a couple of photos of me completely naked.

  My favourite book is Lolita because I just adore the pubescent teenaged girl look. It rocks. I also like the Edie Sedgwick look. How many drugs can one girl take? Never enough, because taking drugs looks really, really cool. Kate Moss is the hippest woman alive. Fact. Here’s a photo of my best friend, Misty.

  Getting dressed in the morning can be the most difficult thing ever. You have to, like, remember where you are, get out of bed and decide what to wear. My tip is to get someone to phone Chanel and get them to send over a selection of their latest collection. That way you can be sure what you’re wearing is clean. You’re welcome. Here’s a rubbish doodle of mine.

  When buying new Converse, make sure to get the sales assistant to rub a bit of mud on them. Though obvs only Cotswolds mud. Anything else makes you look common. Isn’t it strange how my hair always looks best the night before I have a hair appointment booked for the following day? Though, on reflection, this could be just because I have a hair appointment every day. Then I expect you do, too, so you know how I feel. Here are some more photos of me looking amazing.