Older Reviews- Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him

(Note: The following article was written in November of 2007 by a Franklin and Marshall College student.) 

           F&M students should be proud.

            Danielle Ganek’s novel, Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, has been floating around campus since its publication earlier this semester. It’s been on display in both the bookstore and the writers’ house. The alumni magazine published on parents’ weekend featured Ganek on the front page. The writers’ house sponsored a book reading and discussion on Lulu. And finally, after postponing her visit in October, Ganek came back to visit F&M Saturday, November 10.

            It’s one thing to celebrate an F&M alumna (yes, Ganek is an alumna- class of 1985, Franklin and Marshall College). But when I first picked up Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, I didn’t know anything about the author. That being said, it should have been no surprise that one of our own could publish a book like Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him.

            The book treads a very dangerous ground, plot-wise. The main character, Mia McMurray, is a pretty girl who calls herself ugly and works in a Chelsea art gallery, surrounded by gorgeous men and women and famous artists and art collectors. This could easily be an art world rip off of The Devil Wears Prada. But Ganek is much better than that.

            The writing style is extremely witty, first of all. Ganek, through Mia’s voice, fully acknowledges the clichés potential by mocking it and changing it to something only slightly too happy to be satire. The book’s second chapter begins “as a good story often does, with a dead man. The dead man seems a fitting place to start. You might be disappointed to know the dead man wasn’t murdered. No, there’s no murder in my story. Not a lot of sex, either, if that’s what you’re after. If you want to call it a roman a clef, go ahead; I can’t even pronounce that word.” Mia’s voice remains like this for a good part of the book.  Her story is full of caricatures- the pretentious-without-a-clue gallery owner; the gossipy gallery receptionists; the boyish rebel postmodern artist. They are admitted caricatures- there is no doubt to their caricature-osity. In a lesser novel, this could be a problem, but Ganek is a wiz at using stock characters to reveal Mia’s voice and take the cliché of the hackneyed.

            It’s one thing to acknowledge and mock cliché as a way of abandoning it. But Ganek manages to go beyond wit and give the book substance. The title of the book comes from the title of the aforementioned “dead man’s” painting, Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him. Something in the title bothers the art world. As Mia says, “It’s so wordy, so literal, so not cool somehow. It perplexed me. Annoyed me. And made me think.”

            The painting itself is of a girl, Lulu, nine-years-old and holding a paintbrush and a clear expression of self-doubt. The painter, Jeffrey Finelli, before dying several pages later, explains “It’s about the creative endeavor…It’s about how we meet God through our creative acts.” As the book moves forward and the adult Lulu joins the plotline, the book becomes much less about the glamour of the art world and much more about Mia’s own self-doubt with the paintbrush, bringing the book to a much more human level.

            Simply put, the book is a wonderful read. For some reason, it’s difficult to find a fast, easy read in modern fiction without it feeling like a guilty pleasure. Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him has the look of a guilty pleasure, but as far as writing goes, Ganek could be a young reincarnation of Oscar Wilde. And what else should we expect from an F&M graduate?

Grade- A-