GIRLS FOREVER BRAVE AND TRUE

by Caryl Rivers ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 20, 1986

Brassy, wise-cracking, sentimental popular fiction, set in Washington, D.C., in the late 60's: politics, sex, Vietnam, feminism, the Church, the working press ("". . .the look on Helen Thomas' face when Millie said 'multiple orgasm'. . . Roger Mudd nearly choked""). And a continuation of the lives of the Catholic high-school girls in journalist Rivers' first novel, Virgins (1984). Peg Morrison has grown up to win the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Six Day War. In between reporting the shootings at Kent State and an incident involving the Black Panthers, she has an affair with Scan MacCaffery, an activist priest in neighborhood causes and the anti-war movement, who succumbs, after ten years, ""to the desperate hunger to be touched."" His struggle with this hunger forms the core of the book. Peg is pregnant but doesn't tell Scan when he is transferred to Chicago. Peg's friends, Constance Masters (who leaves her husband, Lee, when he, drunk, beats her), and Kitty Cohen (a prominent widow who is dumped by her congressman lover, Dan Admundsen, when his senate opponent's anti-Semitic advertising seems to be losing Dan votes), help Peg through her pregnancy. Meanwhile, Sean's brother Bill, a recovered alcoholic, commits suicide, and Peg may have to go to jail for not revealing her sources on the Panther story, yet everything--after much suffering--ends well. Con reunites with her reformed husband; Kitty has a new, gorgeous, young lover; and Peg gives birth to twins in a zany, Marx Brotherish, joyful last scene, with Sean, reconciled to leaving the priesthood, in attendance. There's much that is authentic and well-observed here. But the important issues of the novel--both political and personal--are undermined by clichÉd prose: ""You're the person who made me believe in happiness."" The women--so strong, brave, true, and busy--are too often didactic in speech and thought. Their flawed men are richer, more interesting and touching characters.

Pub Date: May 20, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1986

Categories: FICTION