Book Review: Detergent

This review will begin with a story. Back a few years ago, I introduced a lot of my friends to this book called Divergent, and they all liked it. Of course, my friends being the practical jokers that they are, came up with an idea for a parody of Divergent, with its new title being “Detergent”. We had a good laugh over it and to this day we still bring it up every once in a while, though it has mostly been spoken between me and just one other friend as an inside joke. Then, while I was browsing through books to get for my birthday, I happened to come across a parody of Divergentthat was actually called Detergentand actually existed. After nearly dying of laughter, I called my friend to let him know that the book existed, and then bought it, not stopping to think about how bad parodies have become, with movies like The Starving Games and Vampires Suck and a whole ton of awful book parodies. Well, I read it, and decided to review it. So, how does it hold up? Sit back, relax, and read on as I review Detergent by Reid Mockery. Also, please pardon some of the language in this review, as one of the faction’s names is “Badass” and it is impossible to talk about this book without mentioning them, along with some crude character names. You have been warned.

The Setup:

In a dystopian future, the city of Pittsburgh has been divided into five factions: the Bleeding Hearts (Abnegation), the Tactless (Cantor), the Irritable (Erudite), the Mollycoddles (Amity), and the Badass (Dauntless). However, those who don’t end up within a faction become a “Detergent”, and do everyone’s laundry for them and for whatever reason are looked down upon even by the so-called “selfless” Bleeding Hearts. Meet protagonist Beverly Cryer, or Vurl. She’s about to take the test to see which faction she will end up in, and these are her feelings towards this situation: “This basically sucks. I like my family a lot. But, I don’t like my faction…our faction, Bleeding Hearts, is the most boring faction in all of Pittsburgh. We’re supposed to care about others before we think of ourselves. I can’t name you one teenage girl in my faction who actually believes in that motto.” (location 67). So, yeah, she’s pretty torn. When she gets her test results back, however, she is labeled a Detergent. Not wanting to do people’s laundry, she ends up choosing a different faction and the story begins. In other words, if you take this seriously, you will probably despise this book until the end of time. 

The Humor:

I normally don’t make a section just to talk about a book’s comedy, but this book is a parody and you should probably be aware of what type of humor you’ll be reading in this book. The comedy for me was pretty hit-or-miss. What the book gets right is pretty hilarious. What the gets wrong…it really fails. So, let’s move on to the actual humor. There are a lot of gross-out jokes in the book that I did not find very funny. For example (and this is one of the the more mild jokes), Vurl wanted to get a tattoo of birds flying on her collarbone, like Beatrice did in Divergent. Instead, the tattoo designer “forgot” to put wings on the birds and so they looked like turds, because the Bleeding Hearts have the nickname of “turds” due to their brown clothes. Now, this is nowhere nearthe worst of the humor, but it made me feel slightly uncomfortable. Secondly, there are some forth-wall jokes directly insulting Divergent that I found to be hilarious. For example, “I know, it doesn’t make sense. It’s as if there was a giant plot problem in the original book and this is the only way to build the conflict. It’s about as unreasonable as you and I just happening to meet here in the lobby.” (location 1384). I don’t exactly remember what this line was referring to in Divergent, but I do remember that around this point in the original book some plot holes began to pop up, so it got a laugh out of me. There was one pop culture reference, just one, that I thought was the funniest joke in the entire book. It was referring to the scene where Tris had to stand in front of the target in Divergent. In this version, Vurl stood up for her friend Harry and was ordered to stand in front of the target. Well, Vurl’s friend Skittles decided to pipe up and say, “ ‘I’ll take her place...I volunteer as tribute!” (location 903). Then, Bates (this book’s version of Eric) says, “You can’t do that here, shuttup.” I laughed so hard at that joke that I was nearly in tears. The final type of humor is just flat-out making fun of the book by detracting quality along with some bashing of common clichés. Since humor is very subjective, I hope that you take the time to consider the type of humor I presented to you before picking up this book.

The Characters:

The characters were very entertaining to read about, and fit the tone of the story to a T. Vurl is hilarious, being the selfish and not-so-bright former Bleeding Heart, but beyond that, the characters are pretty forgettable. I mean, sure, some of the character names are unforgettable (Skittles, Jack Kass, ect.), but their personalities were not really focused on. The only other character that I thought was memorable was Vurl’s mother, and only because she is a BOSS.

The Story:

If you know the story of Divergent, then you know the story of Detergent; it’s as simple as that. The main difference is that Detergentseems to look at the story in a more mean-spirited light. While it’s not like the original book was all fun and games, this book takes the original tone and injects a whole ton of cruelty into it, concerning practically everything. It may be meant for comedic purposes at times, but there are some times where it makes the book flat-out unpleasant, and it normally coincides with the gross-out humor, which just makes it even more uncomfortable. But, if you can get past that, the story is pretty enjoyable as a satire of Divergent.

Writing Style/Grammatical Errors:

I liked the writing style; it was satirical, witty, and straight to the point, like a good comedy should be. I also really liked how it felt more natural than your average parody, and it takes talent to transition something as serious as the original Divergent into a satire. Then, there are the grammatical errors. Oh. My. God. This book had some of the worstgrammatical errors and misspellings that I have ever seen! The tenses were sometimes off, there were no commas (for the most part), words were unbelievably botched (“shuttup” isn’t even a word), and I’m just scratching the surface. I get that this is a self-published novel, but this is what I would like to tell self-published novelists; if you want to publish a novel without putting it through an editor first, MAKE SURE THAT YOU KNOW YOUR FREAKING GRAMMAR!

Final Judgment:

Overall, this book is a mixed bag. Some of its humor hits bulls-eyes, but a good majority of it is practically dedicated to making you feel uncomfortable. The characters and story are over-the-top and funny, but not that memorable, and the story is pretty good if you can handle its mean-spirited way of telling it to you. I give Detergent an unbiased below-average 2.75 out of 5, and only read it if you have a high tolerance of bad jokes. If you don’t, however, never touch this book with a ten-foot pole. But, like always, it’s always up to you to decide your own opinion.
ScoreCard:

Detergent on Amazon (you can borrow the book for free if you have a Prime Membership): http://www.amazon.com/Divergent-Parody-Detergent-Reid-Mockery-ebook/dp/B00H2A30A8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392478428&sr=8-1&keywords=detergent+by+reid+mockery

Further Recommendations:

The Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth

Not sure this recommendation needs an explanation, but if you want to read the books that inspired this parody, I’d recommend these…but you should probably skip the last book and just imagine how the series ends.

Nightlight by The Harvard Lampoon

Though I haven’t personally read the book myself, I am recommending it to you for two reasons:

1.    It was the best-reviewed parody on Amazon that I could find

2.    It’s a Twilight parody. What more could you ask for?

Go ahead and read it if you feel so inclined and let me know how it is.

Anime review next week! Here's the hint: People die when they are killed.

See you then!