Book review: I See Rude People: One Woman’s Battle to Beat Some Manners into Impolite Society
 Book author: Amy Alkon
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Australia
Syndicated columnists are somewhere between an endangered species and a volcano. They’re a sparse breed of a certain value to the ecological balance, and yet you really want to keep as far away from them as possible.
Because when syndicated columnists erupt, they really go for it.
As well as having her columns syndicated across America in both print and digital spaces, Amy Alkon also blogs (advicegoddess.com) and Tweets.
Right from page one of I See Rude People, it’s painfully clear that when Amy vents, she does so with all the subtleties of a blunt axe.
And yet, no doubt about it, she’s witty, stylish and urbane. Best of all, she never misses an opportunity to tell it like it is.
Amy says it like we all too often want to say it but are deeply afraid of embarrassing ourselves – or worse, embarrassing someone else.
After hearing someone mouth off into a mobile phone in Starbucks, she caught the guys phone number, called him later and blasted him for intruding on her space. More power to you Amy.
But she gets worse – or perhaps better, cheekier, more sinister, somewhat evil, outright hilarious and audacious … take your pick.
Never try to telemarket someone like Amy Alkon. After receiving an auto-dialled phone call message from the vice-president of a supermarket, Amy hunted down the head honcho’s number and called him at home one evening. It’s revenge, cold and simple.
I See Rude People is replete with anecdotes like this – ones that will leave you cringing in the aisle so-to-speak, mumbling to yourself something like, ‘Did she really do that?’
There’s a claim on the book’s back cover that Alkon delves into anthropology, sociology and psychology to discover the motivations and drives of human bad behaviour.
Sure there is a little toe-dipping into these scholarly-ologies, but don’t buy this book for that alone. You’d do better to search the widely published academic realm of behaviour studies.
Rather, Amy Alkon is the queen of the clever come-back – the one you turn to for a laugh because sometimes it’s just funny to speak the world as we’d like it to be spoken.
In the final, perhaps redemptive, chapter, Alkon endeavours us to champion niceness as an alternative to bluntness. Wisely, she quotes the Dalai Lama’s famous adage, “If you want to be happy, practice compassion”.
It does contradict much of Alkon’s style, but careful inspection does reveal that she’s a true humanist despite her occasionally snapping tongue.
I See Rude People is bound to raise various – perhaps heated – debates. Rightly, everyone has an opinion on bad behaviour. But only some of us have a way of beating a path through the mire.
The bottom line: Lots of fun
Good for: People who feel intimdated by rudeness
Our rating: 8/10 |
By Ben Zipper, Editor, Women & Leadership Australia eNewsletter
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