Book Review: Hugs and Kisses Charity

Title: Hugs and Kisses Charity

Author: Emily Dana Botrous

Date: 2023

Publisher: Emily Dana Botrous

Quote: "$47,818. That's how much the renovation would cost."

Charity is an extrovert but she's the kind of tough, self-disciplined, high-achieving extrovert I have to respect. It's hard not to picture her with Sarah Palin's hair and Anna Wintour's wardrobe. Her approach to her job resembles theirs.

Charity's mother has become a paraplegic after a traffic accident so it's not surprising that Charity doesn't feel very charitable about the gas-guzzling urban pickup truck that bullies its way into her parking space, especially when she learns that it belongs to a new co-worker. A better designed house would have had a wheelchair-accessible bathroom, already. Most early twentieth century houses were not well designed and most earlier houses, though better designed in many ways and easier to add one to, didn't have indoor bathrooms. Better late than never; Charity is going after a prize being held out to the employees who sell most insurance in the next few weeks--a chance to participate in a real-life "Amazing Race" game and win a $50,000 prize. There is no second prize.

Ben Halverson, the new co-worker, is a new Christian with a few lingering bad habits, including thinking a lot better of himself than he ought to. The type who might be attractive if so many people hadn't told him how good-looking he is. Nature has been rather generous in supplying young men with muscles and cheekbones and suchlike, which are enough to get a man modelling or acting jobs, but are not a valid reason for giving him anything else. In order to attract sensible women a man must show interest in one particular woman in an attractive way, and Charity just happens to have been at school with Ben the year a young hormone-sick idjit threw herself at him and Ben showed his lack of interest in a memorably off-putting way. Ben doesn't even remember Charity, now a highly polished and dressed-for-success yuppie who probably shows no resemblance to anyone in high school. He now finds her attractive--not only her looks, but her hard work and strong character--but she makes him work to prove it, which is a cardinal rule for women who find it possible to like a man who is generally considered attractive. 

Ben is rich, but not too rich to have a good use for $50,000. He's a winner in all categories and enjoys showing it as the game tests every kind of skills--beginning with the ability to work with a teammate who's seemed incompatible, and proceeding through logic, math, local history, driving in traffic, wall climbing, power shopping, bicycle riding, even choking down a heavy breakfast at a client's restaurant, to the final foot race. Ben and Charity are the winning team, and the first tests in the final round where they compete against each other are a close match, but they both know he can run faster.

Knowing who can run faster becomes the subject of a lovers' quarrel, after the couple know they're in love, and it's also the one thing I find not to like about this book. It's not true that any "reasonably fit" man is stronger and faster than any woman. I've upset enough expectations about that to know. It's not even true that the author believes that: we've already seen that Ben is the only man in the office who can compete with Charity. It's that Ben is, like Charity, not a professional athlete but a keen one.  Few people could do anything but be embarrassed in a foot race with either of them. Overall they're well matched; in the foot race, his legs are longer. So the author should not have asked "Why did the average well-built man have to be physically superior to even the fittest woman?" The average well-built man is built with a few specific advantages in muscle strength, but even in those he's not physically superior to the fittest woman. Ben and Charity run marathons. If Charity had been running a foot race against some thirty-year-old math-head who thinks he's still fit because he's not fat, but he's not actually run a mile lately, his longer strides and faster muscle twitches might keep him ahead for the first hundred yards, and then he'd be puffing and groaning, probably faking a limp, as she left him behind. If women had not been brought up in the belief that allowing this to happen would destroy the feeble male mind, we'd see it happen more often than we do.

It may seem heretical but I don't think women even want to believe that the men we love "are stronger" than we are. I think I, at least, am free from that craving. To be a man he has to have different kinds of strength than women have. When mixed classes of teenagers explore the high school weight room the boys find some of the weights easier to lift, and the girls find others easier. Different body shapes are formed partly by muscles that develop in different ways. I like people who use every talent they've got, to the greater glory of God. I like men who have used and developed the kinds of strength that come with the male body. In the absence of specific disabilities a man's not being able to run faster than a woman is a character defect--laziness. But male muscle strength is something to be enjoyed while it lasts. It doesn't last as long as the female variety. Most women who mate for life are going to end up playing sick nurse. Instead of playing up to a fantasy that men "are stronger," as if this were true in every way and for all time, women would do better to appreciate that men have complementary kinds of muscle strength that can be useful while they last.

And, "physically superior"? Say what? Show me a man who can move his pelvic bones enough to give birth to a viable-size baby...and live. Men do not have that ability because they were not designed to need it. They don't give birth. The species is designed to benefit from having males who survive and help raise their young, but to survive if men die before their offspring are born. Is disposability a "superior" quality?

Anyway Charity is a strong competitive woman who wants a man who can, overall, keep up with her, which by definition means he can beat her in a foot race. That's what she gets. Meanwhile, the competition pushes her beyond her extensive limits and causes her to realize that, while leading an exemplary Christian life, she has some growing in grace and wisdom to do...

I'd like to read the reactions people in Michigan have to this book. It's set in Michigan and I think the author, who is not a native but has lived there, did a good job of describing the place and people. As they seem to a sojourner among them, anyway.