閱讀識字 English Reading Made Easy

One day at a mall in Ventura, Calif., a real estate agent named Jonell McLain had a retail epiphany. She had just sold a house and wanted to buy her clients a box of candy. Honestly that was all. That was the only reason she was out shopping.

But as Ms. McLain passed a jewelry store something stopped her in her tracks. It was a diamond necklace. “It was, she thought, simply exquisite — and exquisitely simple.” It was morally indefensible and outrageously expensive. And yet. And yet.

“Over the next three weeks Jonell was surprised how often she thought about the diamond necklace,” Cheryl Jarvis writes in “The Necklace,” an inspirational-bling book that means to position itself somewhere between “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” and “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” Jonell McLain’s innocence turned inspirational when she realized she could buy the necklace for entirely unselfish and uplifting reasons.

What if a group of women were to split the purchase price, own the necklace together and set up a system for sharing it? What if they used their collective energy to help others, learn important life lessons and repudiate materialism? What if they “rewrote the narrative of desire”? It was this kind of thinking that would eventually lead Ms. McLain to want to write a column called “The Champagne Socialist” for a Ventura magazine.

And it was this selfless yet highly marketable ploy that led the story of the necklace to People magazine, “Today,” a movie deal and no doubt, imminently, the best-seller lists. What accounts for this instant popularity? Perhaps that everything about “The Necklace” can be summed up in a single sentence. “It’s the story of 13 women who transformed a symbol of exclusivity into a symbol of inclusivity and, in the process, remapped the journey through the second half of their lives,” Ms. Jarvis writes.

The inclusivity began at the haggling stage, when Ms. McLain and her friends returned to the jewelry store. Its proprietor, Tom Van Gundy, found these women surprising. Most of his female customers looked sad and needy. This bunch seemed happy and empowered. Mr. Van Gundy liked that. It made him want to accommodate them. “It was the same feeling he had when he played quarterback in high school and didn’t want to disappoint the fans,” according to the book.

But the women couldn’t quite match the purchase price. So Mr. Van Gundy had an idea. He looked at his wife, Priscilla, who did the store’s bookkeeping. She didn’t share the necklace-buyers’ warm glow. She looked beleaguered. She didn’t have female friends. Mr. Van Gundy realized that if he bought his wife a share in the necklace, he could make the sale, brighten lives, encourage sharing and make Priscilla smile again. The deal was done.

Then came the “possibility thinking,” the brainstorming, the rules. The women would have monthly meetings in their earth-tone living rooms, sharing mineral water, wine, goat cheese, artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes as they conducted business.

During one such meeting they decided to give the necklace a cute name. Now it was a she: Jewelia, in honor of Julia Child, who had lived nearby. The women of Jewelia, as they began to speak of themselves, sorority-style, learned to share their hopes and dreams as well as the necklace. And when they talked together, one of them noticed: “The women expressed differing opinions, but without raising their voices like the male pundits on Fox News. The women didn’t call one another ‘wrong’ or ‘stupid.’ ”

It was initially decided that each would have Jewelia for a month. Making love at least once while wearing the diamonds was mandatory. So much for the basics: now came creativity. Various Jewelia wearers went skydiving, karaoke singing, shooting, motorcycle riding. One of them insisted on wearing the necklace to a gynecological exam. The book includes photographic records of all of the above.

Because Ms. Jarvis writes in the simple, virtual Young Adult format of self-help, “The Necklace” gives each woman a stereotypical handle: “The Loner,” “The Traditionalist,” “The Leader,” “The Visionary” and so on. (“The Feminist” is the group’s only brunette.) It shapes each thumbnail character sketch to fit these stereotypes. And nobody does anything without finding a path to self-improvement.

Among the aphorisms that crown “Necklace” chapters are these: “Women friends are essential to a healthy life.” “It affirmed that I don’t need diamonds to be happy.” “We are not what we wear or what we own.” “Today when I look in my closet I feel sick.”

One member of the group wears the diamonds to bed, feels sexually reinvigorated, decides to lose 25 pounds and starts ordering special costumes — schoolgirl, cowgirl, harem girl, bar wench — that drive her husband wild. But most of the others learn preachier lessons. And most of these lessons are legitimately useful. The group unquestionably helps others by using the necklace to raise money for charities and by appreciating the intangible, self-actualizing gifts that can’t be had in jewelry stores.

But real honesty and insight are antithetical to this book’s experiment. It wants to simultaneously exploit and renounce the same craving. So the diamonds are cannily manipulated throughout “The Necklace” to both titillate and congratulate readers and to reinforce what they already know. On an outing one day Ms. McLain goes to a bookstore while her friend and necklace mate Patti Channer eyes a chiffon poncho. Which one of them will learn the error of her ways?

We aren’t what we own or wear. But we are what we read. And “The Necklace” will be read widely. Though Ms. Jarvis never says so, the best way to honor the book’s principles is to share your copy with a friend.