Loving evocations of San Francisco are a pleasure, but Lillie's Sturm und Drang feels more collegiate than apocalyptic.
Marino debuts with a capably detailed but psychologically only half-convincing tale of a dysfunctional San Francisco family: a father who's consumed by drugs, a mother who disappears, and two grown daughters who vent their anger as though born to the task.
Older sister Nina, 27, has a genius IQ and a photographic memory. To spite her parents, though (who pushed too hard for a career in medicine, etc.), she's now a stripper at The Trapdoor, where she's, well, outstanding in her field. Sister Lillie, at 24, has a different problem—namely the dyslexia that kept her from even nearing the academic glories expected of her after Nina's example. Add to this mix the fact that Larry and Midge (that would be Mom and Dad, except that in this family, they've always been addressed by first name) are in fact fairly strange birds, hostile yet weak-willed Midge susceptible to tantrums, and anesthesiologist Larry a heavy drug abuser for the past 25 years, since joining his hospital's staff. The story starts as Midge, deciding she's finally had enough, leaves a note and splits the scene for keeps—a dodge that upsets narrator Lillie more than it does the reader, who doesn't quite understand why things are changed so very much or why the sisters think now something must be done about Dad's drugs. The story has to go on, though, as Lillie loses sleep, smokes and drinks way much (as if destined to go Daddy's way), and in her rather sophomoric rage even jeopardizes an affair with bona-fide nice guy cop Rick. Another bolt from the blue hits when Lillie's beloved mentor and soulmate Thomas Finch (owner of the cartography shop she's worked in since girlhood) dies of a heart attack. Angry Lillie will get worse before getting better.
Loving evocations of San Francisco are a pleasure, but Lillie's Sturm und Drang feels more collegiate than apocalyptic.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-393-04909-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.
Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish.
The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets—first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. The gossips are agog: “In Mallard, nobody married dark....Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.” Desiree's decision seals Jude’s misery in this “colorstruck” place and propels a new generation of flight: Jude escapes on a track scholarship to UCLA. Tending bar as a side job in Beverly Hills, she catches a glimpse of her mother’s doppelgänger. Stella, ensconced in White society, is shedding her fur coat. Jude, so Black that strangers routinely stare, is unrecognizable to her aunt. All this is expertly paced, unfurling before the book is half finished; a reader can guess what is coming. Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. The scene in which Stella adopts her White persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion. It calls up Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the book's 50-year-old antecedent. Bennett's novel plays with its characters' nagging feelings of being incomplete—for the twins without each other; for Jude’s boyfriend, Reese, who is trans and seeks surgery; for their friend Barry, who performs in drag as Bianca. Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress.
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53629-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An engaging, inclusive debut.
A young woman with cognitive disabilities finds inspiration in Viking legends and prepares herself to become a hero when her brother gets involved with drug dealers.
Zelda knows she’s different than most people she meets, and she understands that difference is because of something called fetal alcohol syndrome. She has seen the unkind glances and heard the muttered slurs, but really, she just wants what any 21-year-old wants: love, acceptance, and some degree of independence to make decisions about her life. Also? A really good sword would be useful. Zelda is obsessed with Vikings—their legends, their fierce loyalty, their courage in the face of danger. Like the ancient clans, she finds strength in her tribe: her older brother, Gert, and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, AK47, plus her helpful therapist and her friends at the community center, especially her boyfriend, Marxy. He isn’t the best kisser, but he’s willing to try sex, a subject about which Zelda is definitely curious. But when Gert struggles to pay the bills and gets involved with dangerous drug dealers, Zelda knows she has to step in and help him whatever the cost. “The hero in a Viking legend is always smaller than the villain,” she reasons. “That is what makes it a legend.” In this engaging debut novel, MacDonald skillfully balances drama and violence with humor, highlighting how an unorthodox family unit is still a family. He’s never condescending, and his frank examination of the real issues facing cognitively disabled adults—sexuality, employment, independence—is bracing and compassionate. With Zelda, he’s created an unforgettable character, one whose distinctive voice is entertaining and inspiring. Will appeal to fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
An engaging, inclusive debut.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2676-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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