What kind of girl lies about
a sick aunt to borrow money
for half-priced designer scarf
and loses a job because she hid
a pair of zebra-print jeans from
a customer?
A type of girl like Rebecca
Bloomwood from Sophie
Kinsella’s book, “Confessions of
a Shopaholic.”
Bloomwood, a young attractive
journalist, shops to fill a
void she feels exists in her life
like a lot of young women do
today.
If she has a bad day, a cappuccino,
a muffin and a department
store can solve the problem.
But Bloomwood does not just
shop to feel better.
She shops because she feels
she deserves all of life’s little
pleasures.
She finds herself spending
way more than she makes
at Successful Savings, a British
financial magazine.
She hates her job because
writing about finances bores
her.
Ironically, dealing with her
own overdrawn bank account
and late payments on her two
credit cards never seems to
excite her either.
Bloomwood frustrated me
when she constantly avoided
calls and letters from her bank
and credit card companies.
At one point she even threw
her bills in a construction worker’s
skip (a British word for trash
can).
“As I’m standing there, a
builder pushes past me with
two sacks of broken plaster,
and heaves them into the skip.
And now they are really gone,”
Bloomwood says, referring to
her bank and VISA bills being
covered and forgotten.
Kinsella did a great job sending
me down the crazy roller
coaster of a debtors life.
The choppy writing in the
beginning of the book matched
Bloomwood’s flighty thoughts.
She would be thinking about
saving money and making her
life better, then she would suddenly
be talking about giving
herself a treat for being so good
at saving.
She ended up more than
œ6,000 in debt with no way out
and the bank manager calling
repeatedly to set up a meeting.
I forged through my dislike
for Bloomwood and her avoidance
of grown-up problems and
fell for her quirky nature.
I found myself wishing that
her fantasies about winning the
lottery, marrying rich or finding
the perfect career making
her money troubles disappear
would happen.
And there he is, Luke
Brandon, the financial genius
that runs a PR firm for financial
companies.
At a press conference Luke
greets her when she walks
through the door.
He loans her money to buy
a scarf she must have, but he
thinks she needs the money to
buy a present for a sick aunt.
She later bumps into him
randomly and they go luggage
shopping to find a gift for his
girlfriend.
Of course finding out he has
a girlfriend sends her into shock
while everything else in her life
starts to fall apart.
To Bloomwood’s dismay final
notices to pay her bills start
arriving.
She goes for a walk to clear her
mind and ends up at Octagon,
her favorite shop.
She finds duvet covers, a robe,
slippers to match the robe and a
couple other odds and ends to
add up to œ370.56.
And like in a nightmare, none
of her credit cards work.
Everyone’s looking at her.
She decides to run away to
her parents’ house to hide from
the bank manager and her job
and her life.
Once there, she writes a story
that becomes popular and she is
thrust onto a popular talk show,
“Morning Coffee,” where she is
forced to debate finances with
Brandon.
I was jumping up and down
trying to understand what was
happening with Bloomwood.
In a sudden twist of fate her
life was coming together, but
she had to get past her fear of
being a failure.
I won’t spoil the ending,
but Kinsella’s book makes
me want to pick up the next
book of the series, “Shopaholic
Takes Manhattan,” just to
see what ridiculous situations
Bloomwood gets herself into
next.
Also this book makes me
think twice about buying the
“gotta have ’em” shoes I saw the
other day in a store.