There’s a new way to show your appreciation of Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield: write a “snarky recap” of your favourite book. 

“Look right down any crowded hall

You’ll see there’s a beauty standing - -

Is she really everywhere, or her reflection?

One always goes up to you

The other’s shy and quiet

Could there be two different girls who look the same

At Sweet Valley High…?”

Why yes, there could – not to mention at Sweet Valley Middle School and Sweet Valley University, and in countless spin-off Super Specials – sometimes starring werewolves, always starring the physically identical but personally antithetical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield.

Sweet Valley High is the Young Adult series “created” by Francine Pascal, but ghost-written by several different writers under the name ”Kate William,” who gives way to one “Laurie John” when things get cutty at SVU.  A late-eighties innovation, these books were being written until about 2003, and are still hugely popular.  They are also – and I say this with love – pretty rubbish.

Nowhere but in Sweet Valley are students alternately rich as Croesus or poor as church mice, constantly falling in love or being date-raped (I kid you not), and having parties all, but all, the time.  The books lurch between the prim (any scene featuring Elizabeth) and the frankly eye-popping, as in one memorable scene between Jessica and her Medieval History lecturer/ lover Professor Louis Miles:

“Jessica responded instantly to his touch. She tilted back her head and parted her lips slightly. Then the passionate fire of his kiss came down upon her. ECSTASY. PURE AND TOTAL ECSTASY.”  

Luckily for us, the internet yields a way to spin this garbage into gold: the “snarky recap,” glorious romps through the plot of the best books, found at sites such as thedairiburger.com, named for Sweet Valley’s burger joint, a favoured hangout for drapes and squares alike, or the livejournal community 1bruce1, named for the Porsche numberplate of Sweet Valley’s resident playboy, Bruce Patman.

The dairiburger and 1bruce1 contributors unerringly pick up on all that is most lampoonable/ loveable about the Sweet Valley books: their repetitive, implausible storylines; their clichéd handling of hot teen topics like eating disorders, alcoholism and parental divorce; their moralising about what tends to be tagged in snarky posts as “teh sex” or “teh drugs.”

Best of all I like these bloggers’ well-timed interjections, which puncture the occasional po-facedness of Francine Pascal and her minions. Recapping SVH no. 88, Love Letters For Sale, wherein a girl named Shelley gets upset because her boyfriend Jim is spending too long putting the school yearbook together, thedairiburger says what we’re all thinking: “Save your time, Jim.  This school year lasts fifteen years.”

Posted by Roberta, with many thanks to Anna Steadman for alerting me to thedairiburger in the first place.