Three female friends face midlife crises in a no-holds-barred exploration of sex, marriage, and the fragility of life. Holly: Filled with regret for being a stay-at-home mom, she sheds sixty pounds and loses herself in the world of extramarital sex. Will it bring the fulfillment she is searching for? Andrea: A single mom and avowed celibate, she watches her friend Holly's meltdown with a mixture of concern and contempt. Holly is throwing away what Andrea has spent her whole life searching for - a committed relationship with a decent guy. So what if Andrea picks up Holly's castaway husband? Marissa: She has more than her fair share of challenges - a gay, rebellious teenage son, a terminally ill daughter, and a husband who buries himself in his work rather than face the facts. As one woman's marriage unravels, another's rekindles. As one woman's family comes apart at the seams, another's reconfigures into something bigger and better. In this story of connections and disconnections, one woman's up is another one's down, and all of them will learn the meaning of friendship, betrayal, and forgiveness. Unflinchingly honest, emotionally powerful, surprisingly erotic, Triangles is the ultimate page-turner. Hopkins's gorgeous, expertly honed poetic verse perfectly captures the inner lives of her characters. Sometimes it happens like that. Sometimes you just get lost. Get lost in the world of Triangles, where the lives of three unforgettable women intersect, and where there are no easy answers.
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0My relationship with Ellen Hopkins' work is much like my relationship with Jodi Picoult's work. Both are good if not fabulous writers--Hopkins might have a leg up on Picoult, as her prose is at least quite unique and recognizable as HERS--and both have a formula. Having a formula when writing is not necessarily a bad thing, and completely understandable when cranking out at least one book a year is your primary income.
Hopkins' formula, like Picoult's, is simple: grab a controversy, some fucked up characters, and perhaps a multi-narrator structure. Whip about five hundred pages together (in Hopkins' case those pages go by very quickly due to her prose structure) and voila! You have a bestseller.
"Triangles" is Hopkins' first foray into adult fiction. I remember that she advised her YA readers to steer clear of this one. I don't know why. Really, "Triangles" is not much racier than Hopkins' YA fare, which has always leaned on the side of grit. In a lot of ways, her three middle-aged heroines don't read any differently from her teen characters, Holly in particular (though I suspect that was intentional in the one character's case).
Like much of Hopkins' work, "Triangles" skims dangerously close to after-school special at certain points. It can become a bit tiresome at points and repetitive, a bit cliche. Much of the book is dependent on whether or not you're interested in the characters' adventures.
Marissa and Andrea are bearable enough, though Marissa's story--lax husband, terminal daughter, conflicted gay son--is overly depressing at some points. Andrea, on the other hand, doesn't have much of a plot. She's just a single mom, living Holly and Marissa's problems from the outside instead of having many interesting issues of her own.
Holly is completely unbearable. At the same time, she at least has a scandalous storyline. Then again, her voice is so annoying that it's hard to go on at times... Not sure what I think about that, even now.
Overall, I would say that "Triangles" is worth the read if you are a fan of Hopkins' work. Don't expect it to be as good as her other books, and don't make this your first Hopkins read, because it's not her best. But it's interesting enough--I'll give her that.
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