The aspects of culture reflected in the book

This book really can't be regarded as a masterpiece of the world's litterature (no way), but - as it's a modern book, there are modern aspects like:
-the modern lifestyle of a 25-30 year old girl;
-the way that English people spend friday night (pubs, clubs - that's what do they do)
-the relationships in standart english families
-the relationships between friends, what's normal and what's weird
-the things that english girls are ashamed of
-the usual portrait of a perfect man  - and how the girls see him, the main criteria, traits
-the way you should behave in a contemporain society

alternative ending

Let's try to imagine how could the book finish but fot Jack's love for example.
1. Emma would have continued to lie and to have little dirty secrets. Definitely.
2. Emma's parents would have never (or would, but too late) realize that their daughter wasn't a crap, that was Kerry ( Emma's cousin who became an adopted child in Emma's family after her parents' death) who was nasty, miserable and crappy. Jack opened the mom's and dad's eyes by means of like 2 sentences.
3. If Jack didn't love her, he could have easily fire her. He had reasons, proved by emma's "occasional" words in plane and actually sometimes she WAS an awful employee.

To sum it all up : but for Jack she would have been jobless, in some sense parents-less but full of odd secrets. 

LETTER

Dear Sophie Kinsella!
I'm writing to you now as I understood a very important thing - the total happiness is a lie-free life. It's a life, when you don't have little, but shameful secrets. It's better to be an honest person that to try to memorize all the little lies you make every day, every hour. but before getting rid of secrets we should realize when and why we began to lie. Maybe the reason was the lack of self confidence and the fear of being rejected the same just as you are. Maybe it's a fear of being different from other people and that's why you lie about your life, your stuff so on. But the mainest idea that if we live under the LIE-mask, we are not ourselves. we're just a distorted shadow of some person.

Thank you for making me realize that it's better to be pretty weird or so on that to be a distorted shadow of your real, beautiful soul.

IT I COULD MAKE A MOVIE

Actually, there's a story about rich-and-seflf-confident businessman and poor-awkward girl, that's a very famous film with R.Gere and J.Roberts. Surely there is a great difference between these two stories, but characters seem to be pretty similiar. So that's the reason why If i could, I would definitely choose Gere + Roberts as there are really gifted actors. But If they refused, I would replace them with C.Diaz as Emma and maybe Josh Holloway as jack. However, I like the first pair most. J.Roberts looks naive with her pretty curly hair, her eyes are kind and nice. Perfect Emma - good one, lovely one. R.gere, looks pretty older than Roberts - as Jack was older that Emma. Wearing a posh suit, he looks like a real multimillionaire. Just as it should be!
Artemis, Emma's workmate, kind of a creeper that always interfere into other's affairs. However, according to the book, she looked nice and her clothes was nice. Demi Moore would be perfect, but too old, in this case we can also regard Keira Knightley. She's younger and talanted, I believe she could be a wicked-creeper-mate.
Emma's mother, "blind" as she could not see how mean and cruel the cousin Kerry was to her own daughter. To this role, we need a distracted, weird actress. Like old Barbra Brylska. In her last film "The Destiny's Irony-2" she played a nice, but weird old woman :)

A short description of the book

1st of all, we all know it's pretty hard to read a description of your mate's book so that's why i decided to retell the plot. however the book was almost 500 pages, the description won't be long, I don't want to bore and annoy you :)

The novel itself begins with the short story of the main character's life. Her name is Emma and she's a simple London girl - nothing special. Usual job, usual routine life, nasty cousin that actually spoils Emma's existence usual secrets that she hides from all the people around her - like that one of her handbags is a fake or like her workmate artemis really annoys her however Emma can't say it right in her face. And one day she finally had a very important work-trip to Glasgow. There she failed and after boarding the plane to London the plane had a really serious turbulence and Emma decided it was going to crash. Ceased with horror, she began shouting out loud all the secrets she had - and the man who had a next to Emma place was sure to hear them all. And actually remember them all. And occasionally he turned out to be Emma's boss Jack she had never seen.
Then, we can see how Emma's secrets worked agaist and for her.
P.S. - Without doubt, Jack fell in love with Emma :)

VOCABULARY

1.Conviction - осуждение, убеждение. (I've always had this deep down conviction that I'm not like everybody else)
2.to screw sth up - "провалить" что-либо (This is my big chance and I'm not going to screw it up)
3.to bluff - блефовать (I think I bluffed pretty convincingly)
4.to wriggle - Извиваться, ёрзать (I write down "rebranding" and "Doug Hamilton" on my notepad and give an awkward little wriggle)
5.Shoe-horn - can be used as a noun, as "ложечка для обуви",and as a verb "Впихиваться" - and it seems to me that the author uses it in a pretty sarcastic way (I need to shoe-horn myself into them (knickers))
6.to fib - привирать. (Connor bought a pair of gorgeous pale pink silk knickers, and he told the lingerie assistant I weight eight stone three. Whereupon she told him I must be size eight. Size eight! Frankly, I think she was just being mean. She must have known I was fibbing.)
7.deluded - находящийся в заблуждении (I am such a deluded moron)
8.to impinge on - оказывать отрицательное влияние на.. (But now his voice starts to impinge on my consciousness)
9.to cock up - "напортачить", 10.crap - ничтожество (they'll think I cocked it up and I'm completely crap)
11.dejected - удручённый (As I drag my heels acrosse the concourse at Glasgow Airport, I feel compeletely dejected)
12.Morosely- угрюмо (to say sth morosely)
13.Blobby  - застиранный, неудачно постиравшийся, испортившийся в результате стирки (My bra shows. My pink lacy bra. The one that went a bit blobby in the wash)
14.Groggy  -нетвердо стоящий на ногах - из-за болезни, или опьянения. ( -How are you feeling after a flight? -A bit groggy)
15.to spritz oneself with perfume - пшикнуться духами
16.to choke on - задыхаться от ( I was trying not to choke on the amount of aftershave he's wearing)
17.to simper - жеманно улыбаться, наигрывать улыбку (She beams fondly at Kerry, who simpers back)
18.to wrong-foot - доставлять неприятности, "подставлять" (Kerry always manages to wrong-foot me. Whatever she did, everyone took her side)
19.tousled hair - взъерошенные волосы
20.poxy - ничтожный, пустяковый (He doesn't care if one of his employees got a poxy A grade or not. I mean, honestly!)
21.to pop in - заходить ненадолго, заглядывать (It's a bright sunshiny morning, and I head towards the juice bar where I usually pop in before work)
22.harassed - встревоженный, but in context it was used as "do you feel racially harassed" so I think it's "рассовая враждебность"
23.obnoxious - противный, неприятный: the kind of people you wanna shoot in the head. ( I know Kerry's an obnoxious cow, but she does have her own travel agency and makes zillions pounds a year)
24.to dab - прикладывать что-либо, (She whispers and dabs hes eyes with a napkin)
25.to churn - крутить ,перемешивать. (My stomach has started to churn at the thought of facing Jack Harper again)
26.to be a dark horse (Lissy is such a dark horse!) - преподносить неожиданность окружающим своими способностями или действиями
27.zapper - пульт от телевизора, климат-контроля, тд..
28.to skive - сачковать, увиливать от работы (Jack Harper used to skive? I would have thought he was too busy being a brilliant creative dynamic genius or whatever he is.)
29.to be an item - быть парочкой, крутить роман (And you two - he gestures to me - are an item?)
30.goody-goody - святая наивность, человек, не причиняющий вреда (God, why does Connor have to be such a goody-goody?)
31.to grope - идти ощупью; but in the book the sense is quite different, "приставать" (What if he gropes you in the taxi?)

32.Deadpan - невозмутимый вид. In style of humour, also known as dry humour. It involves saying something funny, but not changing ones facial expressions or emotions.("Emma, don't laugh" - says Lissy, deadpan)

33.to scuff up - протереться, износиться(об обуви) (I slide into my pointy suede boots. I got them in a Sue Ryder shop a year ago, and they're a bit scuffed up, but i the dark you can hardly tell)

CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?

Finally, I chose the book that I wanna describe - "Can you keep a secret" by S.Kinsella. The only reason of postponing the work on my Individual Reading log was that recently I have read some really good books. They are so different and each of them has its own charm so I was really confused. But I didn't choose an antiutopia or a detective story or whatever. I chose a novel, a novel for women, written by a contemporary writer. You can ask me: "What can be worse than this stuff?" Actually,I used to mock at this kind of books, supposing that they can't be read by a normal person. Anyway - I decided to try, and I do not regret. I was really wrong and I confess :) The book in question can be read during vacations or whatever - you won't find there a lot of useful information and this book can't be regarded as a sophisticated one. But there are plenty of expressions that are used in an everyday life. Isn't it useful?