Confessions of a Shopaholic

Honestly, I’ve read such a hilarious book after ages! This is probably the most funny book I’ve read after Bridget Jones, and when I say funny I don’t mean it will make you smile or giggle. This book will make you laugh aloud.

The book is about a girl, Becky Bloomwood, who is an obsessive compulsive shopper. She has maxed out all her credit cards and is neck deep in debt, yet she cannot – just cannot – control her shopping urges. She always finds a reason why she needs something (that she wants to buy), however bizarre it might be! She’ll go to any lengths to buy things, even if that involves borrowing money from people or hiding merchandise from customers at a store.

Which brings me to my absolute favorite sequence in the entire book.....

So, Becky is looking for a weekend job which will help her pay off her debt as her regular weekday job does not pay her enough to support her outrageous shopping habits. She lands herself a job as an assistant at a clothes store, which she thinks would be a glamorous job where she’ll be required to help customers select their outfits, give them styling tips etc.

On the first day of the job, she turns up dressed her stylish best (of course, if she’s going to give styling tips to her customers, she's got to look the part herself!) but is made to change into the store uniform that has nothing stylish about it. And instead of being asked to give styling tips to customers, she’s made to fold clothes that customers discard after trying on!

On the first day itself, she spots a pair of zebra-print jeans that she loves and plans to buy during her lunch break. However, a customer picks them up for trying on, along with 3 other outfits. So she lies to the customer that they are allowerd only 3 outfits at a time inside the fitting room (though they're allowed 4) & insists on holding the zebra print jeans back. And then....she hides them!!!

And pretends she doesn’t know where they went!!!

So obviously she’s fired on the spot....but she asks her manager if she can quickly do some shopping on her employee discount card before leaving the store! This incident had me in splits.

There are more such funny incidents in the book. The excuses she gives to her bank for not paying up (including that she's finally found her savior in Jesus Christ), her accidental run-in into her bank manager & his assistant who have been trying to track her down for ages & whose communications she has been repeatedly ignoring, are outrageously funny.

The last 30-40 pages of the book were a let down though. Unable to take all the sh*t in her life, she escapes to her parents’ house where she tries to help people & to set things right in her life. Suddenly, she’s not herself anymore! She sorts out her finances, pays off all the debt & also ceases to be funny. So does the book. That’s not how you want to end a really funny book.

They’re apparently making a movie based on the book. I hope they don’t make a dumbed-down high school version of it! This is a smartly written, witty book & and they should make a smart, crisp movie out of it.

Some people warned me not to read this book as they found it to be depressing. I wonder how?? There’s only one way you can find this book depressing, i.e., if you think you have a “shopping problem” yourself.