I hate picking the short straw. *sigh*
Wahida Clark's latest offering feels like it was written by a horny 10th grade boy.
Payback With Ya Life, is a gritty, urban opus of love, loss, and large penises. Very large penises. No one in this novel has a small or average penis, and Wahida Clark wants to make sure you know that, each and every time someone has sex. Unfortunately, all of these wonderful instruments of pleasure are attached to total fucking assholes. There isn’t one male character who doesn’t have a serious character flaw. Still, that doesn’t stop Shan, the tragic heroine, from getting involved with drug dealin’, big pimpin’ Briggen, who has a slight problem with his hands. Shan, devastated by her best friend’s suicide and the betrayal of her incarcerated baby’s daddy, runs into his arms after he stops her from moving to California.
Meanwhile, her fresh-out-the-joint brother, Peanut, is hustling to get back in the drug game and hitting every broad moving, including Shan’s baby daddy’s wife, who is also to blame for setting up Shan. Confused yet? You will be. Because after Clark introduces us to these four, she throws in like, 70 more. It’s a veritable chorus line of unnecessary characters, and they too, have big penises and police records. And they’re ALL fucking each other. Soon there are too many people to keep up with, and if you cared enough to follow you’d probably reach for a pen and notepad to keep tally. But you don’t. You really, really don’t.
What really bothers me–aside from pedestrian prose–is the fact that this is being billed as a story of female empowerment. Now I don’t think having your main character run off with an abusive, drug dealing pimp screams “Girl Power!” but what do I know?
Anyway, the ending is just as violent and muddled as the beginning, so much so that you find yourself rewriting the the plot in your head. My version had a Mexican standoff between Shan, her baby’s daddy, and the Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Now that would’ve been GENIUS.
With plot holes a Mac truck could drive through, quantum leap storytelling, and uninspired “Paint By Numbers” sex scenes that read like an Oz script, Payback With Ya Life is 304 pages of “what the fuck?” complete with reading guide. Yes, this dreck comes with a reading guide, because this isn’t the type of shit one should suffer alone.
But I have to say, while Clark’s work leaves a lot to be desired, it’s still not the worst offender of the “Urban Lit” set. I mean, I suppose it’s a decent read if you’re doing a bid upstate, or if a virus wiped out your net porn stash. Ok, wait. I’m lying. This shit is awful. Save yourself $15 and watch Cinemax.
Final Verdict: Burn, baby, burn.
