There's the unloving mother, the orphaned childhood, the "extraordinarily good-looking" adopted brother, Leslie, whose engagement so dismays her; above all, there's the disturbing precocity with which, at 15, she "picks up" a married man and passes herself off as his wife.
The future is advertising in your books, to the outward dismay of most readers, and certain dismay of publishers, whose standard contracts with authors include a guarantee not to run adverts against their works.
Nowhere is anxiety greater than in Israel, whose government was initially dismayed by Mr Obama's thinly veiled urgings to Mr Mubarak to step down.
America's oldest Greek-language newspaper, the National Herald, accused the US ambassador to Athens, Geoffrey Pyatt, of acting "like a cheerleader" for prime minister Alexis Tsipras, a former communist whose policies have frequently dismayed the diaspora.
The publication of the book will dismay the president – whose popularity dropped another four points this week.
Abroad, the reaction was one of dismay among allies whose military firepower ensured Colonel Qaddafi's fall.
A government with the MMA in it would dismay the West, whose economic and political support Pakistan badly needs.Miss Bhutto, though, has no such compunctions.
But most of all, it was a forthright message from a pope whose own church, to the dismay of many of his supporters, still recognizes the difference between a just and unjust war.
