Review: The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

Annd we're pulling away.  I'm up to 93 books and I'm hoping against hope to finish by the end of the year.  I've put aside my thick biographies and historical fictions in favor of shorter, snappier, lighter fare.  Seven more to go.  As David says, I'm "so close!"  But not quite there yet.  Book #93 is The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot.

Fourteen-year-old Mia Thermopolis is in search of self-actualization.  She's the combat-boot wearing, strict vegetarian daughter of a free-spirited New York artist mother and a father who works in some sort of politics in the far-off principality of Genovia (think Monaco).  Mia's life is fraught with concerns -- how to increase her bustline, passing algebra (no mean fete, even if the algebra teacher is dating her mom), and getting the cutest boy in school to notice her.  Then her father drops a bomb -- he's not a politician, he's the Prince of Genovia.  And because of his recent bout with cancer, he can no longer provide Genovia with an heir.  Which means Mia is a princess, and heiress to the throne.  And she's not happy about it.

I first read Meg Cabot's tale of the reluctant princess back in college, at age 20.  I love the Disney film version starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews.  Be forewarned -- the book is very different from the film.  Julie Andrew's kindly Dowager Princess Grandma is the French-speaking, chain-smoking, borderline alcoholic Grandmere, making Mia's life a living nightmare with a constant stream of French insults and deportment classes she calls "princess lessons."  While at 20 it was very easy for me to drum up sympathy for Mia, it is harder now at age 28, when I guess I'm that much more removed from teenage angst.  And that I can only summarize by saying this:

For someone who is a vegetarian because she is so concerned about the well-being of the planet and its creatures, Mia has absolutely zero grasp on perspective.  Everything is drama.  EVERYTHING IS A VERY BIG DEAL, whether she's being bullied into cutting and dying her hair blonde, or considering cheating on her algebra quiz, or discovering her teacher at her kitchen table in the morning in his boxer shorts.  Everything is a calamity to Mia.  It is hard to take her genuine problems seriously, because she can't differentiate them from minor catastrophes.  Again, maybe it's because I'm old and jaded now, but I wonder if the average teen girl is as flighty and overdramatic as Mia, and if so, how the hell do they ever grow out of it?

I used to love The Princess Diaries series -- I read all the way until Book 5, Princess in Pink, when I started to get bored of both Mia's dramatics and the unbelievable idiocy of the majority of her school friends.  I picked up #8, Princess On the Brink, and read about three chapters before realizing that no, it doesn't get any better (spoiler alert: Mia freaks out because her boyfriend happened to have had sex before he was dating her, with someone else, and dumps him).  

After the travesty that was Abandon (and omg, what a mess that was), I was hoping that rereading some old Meg Cabot, that I used to love, would be a palate cleanser.  Unfortunately, this is one of those books that's better left in your childhood memories, if you liked it when you were young.

Rating: ***