You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
charlottesometimes 's review for:
Modelland
by Tyra Banks
Nothing about this book makes sense, so it's difficult to write a review in the traditional sense. I will try to summarise the story such as it is, before this descends into a list of things that Tyra Banks made me read, and which I couldn't pass by without repeating in disbelief.
Basically this book is what happens if you turn ANTM into a really bad fantasy novel. Especially if you happen to be narcissistic lunatic Tyra Banks.
Protagonist Tookie De La Crème is exactly the kind of Mary Sue cipher you would expect from the self-mythologising, pathologically self-obsessed Banks, possessing all the supposed physical flaws with which Banks is obsessed in herself (big forehead, gangly limbs, difficult hair etc.) She is also a faux-unassuming “Forgetta-Girl” with "multiple-personality hair" who speaks ALL world languages and attracts the attention and admiration of pretty much every character.
She lives in some sort of hellscape where everyone looks like a model, and the majority of people work on "inhumane fashion- or beauty-factory assembly lines", unless they're some type of Oliver Twist factory orphan. The whole thing seems to be ruled over by a giant talking mountain with the Eye of Sauron looming over it, which is where Modelland is located.
Tookie is a downtrodden Cinderella character, living a life of tragedy. For example she has a self-harming homeless best friend who is being chased by mysterious forces and possibly being experimented on at a bizarre asylum, but has time to chat with Tookie about her crush. The main impact of this situation is that Tookie is upset by it. The De La Crème parents meanwhile are cruel circus grotesques, a dipsomaniac ex-acrobat with a glass eye and some sort of hideous wrinklebeast who has a doll she treats as a baby. Plus there’s the sister, who is apparently too stupid to say "ta-dah" correctly, suffers from choreomania and is creepily sexualised for a 13-year-old. Everything is pain and suffering for poor unloved Tookie. Until, in a completely unexpected turn of events, it turns out that she is the chosen one and she is whisked away.
After a psychedelic Yellow Submarine journey through a variety of nonsense Tookie ends up in Modelland, a sort of model Hogwarts where nothing makes sense and they steal your youth or something? Here people shoot clothes out of their hands, speak in pretentious Franglais, and are often part animal.
What follows is a series of random madness over far too many pages: zipper rooms, nightgowns with capes, magical personal lighting, cat people and lessons in not sharing. As well as several random interpolations from a narrator who keeps calling me dahling, and who rarely makes any sense.
Some of the things the reader has to suffer are:
Places:
PitterPatter
Diabolical Divide
Bangle, Bauble, and Bead Institute—B3, aka Bile, Barf, Belches, and Butt Bombs - B4? (Why not B5?
Shivera
SansColor
Metopia
Peppertown
LaDorno
The Melancholia Ward
Perfecta-Fecta (A department store)
Terra BossaNova
Striptown
Taj Gardens in Chakra
Obscure Obelisks
Platinum Row
Bou-Big-Tique Nation (A country which is also a department store?)
Beautification Boulevard
NorDenSwee - Scandinavia, I guess
Cappuccina - Italy?
Chakra - I think India
Basically this book is what happens if you turn ANTM into a really bad fantasy novel. Especially if you happen to be narcissistic lunatic Tyra Banks.
Protagonist Tookie De La Crème is exactly the kind of Mary Sue cipher you would expect from the self-mythologising, pathologically self-obsessed Banks, possessing all the supposed physical flaws with which Banks is obsessed in herself (big forehead, gangly limbs, difficult hair etc.) She is also a faux-unassuming “Forgetta-Girl” with "multiple-personality hair" who speaks ALL world languages and attracts the attention and admiration of pretty much every character.
She lives in some sort of hellscape where everyone looks like a model, and the majority of people work on "inhumane fashion- or beauty-factory assembly lines", unless they're some type of Oliver Twist factory orphan. The whole thing seems to be ruled over by a giant talking mountain with the Eye of Sauron looming over it, which is where Modelland is located.
Tookie is a downtrodden Cinderella character, living a life of tragedy. For example she has a self-harming homeless best friend who is being chased by mysterious forces and possibly being experimented on at a bizarre asylum, but has time to chat with Tookie about her crush. The main impact of this situation is that Tookie is upset by it. The De La Crème parents meanwhile are cruel circus grotesques, a dipsomaniac ex-acrobat with a glass eye and some sort of hideous wrinklebeast who has a doll she treats as a baby. Plus there’s the sister, who is apparently too stupid to say "ta-dah" correctly, suffers from choreomania and is creepily sexualised for a 13-year-old. Everything is pain and suffering for poor unloved Tookie. Until, in a completely unexpected turn of events, it turns out that she is the chosen one and she is whisked away.
After a psychedelic Yellow Submarine journey through a variety of nonsense Tookie ends up in Modelland, a sort of model Hogwarts where nothing makes sense and they steal your youth or something? Here people shoot clothes out of their hands, speak in pretentious Franglais, and are often part animal.
What follows is a series of random madness over far too many pages: zipper rooms, nightgowns with capes, magical personal lighting, cat people and lessons in not sharing. As well as several random interpolations from a narrator who keeps calling me dahling, and who rarely makes any sense.
Some of the things the reader has to suffer are:
Places:
PitterPatter
Diabolical Divide
Bangle, Bauble, and Bead Institute—B3, aka Bile, Barf, Belches, and Butt Bombs - B4? (Why not B5?
Shivera
SansColor
Metopia
Peppertown
LaDorno
The Melancholia Ward
Perfecta-Fecta (A department store)
Terra BossaNova
Striptown
Taj Gardens in Chakra
Obscure Obelisks
Platinum Row
Bou-Big-Tique Nation (A country which is also a department store?)
Beautification Boulevard
NorDenSwee - Scandinavia, I guess
Cappuccina - Italy?
Chakra - I think India