“It fits, but it makes me look fat”…….California Diaries #8: Maggie Diary Two

Recap

Here’s a condensed version of Maggie’s diary:

“I am so fat, I need to lose weight.  I ate 2 whole potato chips today, I am such a pig.  My dad’s annoyingly controlling.  I’m so fat.  I like animals.  Yay, I lost a pound.  My mom’s a drunk.  I need to lose weight.  Why does everyone want me to eat?”

Seriously, that’s like, the whole book.  Slamming you over the head with the fact that Maggie’s anorexic, insecure, and has a poor little rich girl thing happening. But the slightly longer version, is that it’s summer and working at her dad’s fancy film producer office.  She hates it and is annoyed because her dad told her she could spend half her time working with the music editor on this new movie, but the guy moved to Australia and that never happened. 

Meanwhile, Mrs. Blume’s supposed to be planning some big charity event for a save the animals organization. But she keeps missing meetings because of her drinking, so Maggie starts stepping in to help out.  As part of this she visits one of the shelters in town and gets offered  a job there.  She quits working for her dad to take it, which annoys him.  Then she walks out of that job when she made a mistake and 2 dogs got in a fight because of it. I can’t tell if she’s going to keep working there though, even though there’s a scene with her and her boss later on.  The woman thinks she should eat more and that turns Maggie off.  

Right before the charity thing her mom doesn’t come home one night and Mr. Blume had to go out looking for her.  They fight, and as Maggie’s listening to her mom insist she doesn’t have a drinking problem, she starts to wonder if that’s how she sounds when people tell her she needs to eat more.  So, it’s sort of an eye-opening moment.  She even admits to her brother that it’s hard for her to stop dieting.  However, she doesn’t suddenly start eating or anything.

Maggie’s also still in that band.  That part’s annoying too, because she’s still insecure about how she sounds.  She’s also insecure because they ask her to write a new song, and she can’t come up with anything good.  It’s pretty much safe to say that Maggie’s insecure about everything.  That Justin guy she likes joins the band and asks Maggie out.  They go to a movie and everything’s great. But then they go out to eat after and Maggie tries not to eat anything.  But Justin gets annoyed at he because he didn’t like eating alone.  He later calls her and tries to make amends, but Maggie thinks he’s just doing it for the sake of the band.  This is due to that insecurity thing again.

High/Lowlights

• I don’t know what to think about Maggie saying her singing sucks and she’s sure the band wants to get rid of her.  Because in her last diary she kept insisting she failed tests when she aced them.  She’s not exactly a reliable narrator.

• Justin’s joining the band to take over for that abusive guy Amalia was hanging out with.  Which was in January.  So were they not playing in the six months since then? It’s not really clear.

• The only times I found Maggie likable were when she was interacting with her little brother. Their parents are sending him off to tennis camp for the summer and he doesn’t want to go.  He keeps complaining to Maggie and even calls/emails her from camp.  Maggie isn’t necessarily happy to hear from him but she usually acts like a nice sister and lets him vent. 

• Maggie runs into Sunny and Ducky at the mall, and says how she hasn’t seen them in ages.  I think that’s why I didn’t love this book.  There was very little interaction with the other characters in the series. Some with Amalia, but mostly it was just Maggie and her rich but dysfunctional family.

• Sunny and some friend of Mrs. Blume both tell Maggie they can tell she lost weight and looks good.  Which is weird since everyone else is telling her she looks too thin.

• Maggie’s brother Zeke tells her to make sure and check her email while he’s at camp.  And Maggie says how she rarely uses email because she doesn’t know anyone who uses.   This book came out in 1998…I was in HS then and most of my friends had email. 

• However, I would like to know what kind of camp lets kids use phones and the internet.

• It turns out one of the reasons Zeke didn’t want to go away was because of Mrs. Blume drinking and him being worried about something happening with her.

• It amazes me how easy a 13-year-old gets jobs in these books.  Amalia has a job somewhere too. I can buy Maggie’s dad giving her a job in his office, but I didn’t think you could even get working papers so young.

• Maggie’s shopping for something to wear on her date, and Sunny, Amalia, and Ducky all tell her to buy things they’d wear but isn’t her style.  (Well, at least Sunny and Amalia do).  I think this is the third time something like that happened in these books.  These kids are not good at picking out clothes for their friends.

• Whenever I hear Maggie mention Justin Randall, I picture Justin Hartley.  I am not sure why, I know other people named Justin.

• While I found Maggie annoying in this book, I do really like that they had her realize she may have a problem because she thought she sounded like her alcoholic mom when denying that she had a problem.  But that she still didn’t start eating.  It feels realistic.

• I guess teenagers really do have issues and are insecure and all that.  But that doesn’t mean I want to hear their inner most thoughts about it.  So, I am not really a fan of Maggie at this point.