Look beyond its misleading title; this potential sleeper hit has about as much to do with LSD as the French do with Cool...
A young woman’s search for purpose and identity takes her from her stifling, humdrum home in 1950s Cleveland to exhilarating Paris, where anything seems possible, in this novel cum travelogue by French-American expat and literary agent Fuerst.
When Barbara Glass graduates from Western Reserve in the late 1950s, there’s just one thing on her mind: Paris. Unlike the rest of her female contemporaries content with trading in their books for secure secretarial jobs, Tupperware parties and wedding bands, Barbara bucks convention (and her controlling mother’s interests) to embark on a solo adventure to France by boat, in the style of “la fuite en avant—escaping from something through forward movement.” What starts out as a two-week stint turns into more than 10 years in la Ville-Lumières (the City of Lights), as she slowly transforms from country-bumpkin tourist to full-fledged Francophile. Through Barbara’s increasingly enlightened and sophisticated eyes, readers will want to come along for the ride as Barbara “trips” from her first raucous Bastille Day celebration to the Palio horserace in Siena to an Edith Piaf concert at the famous Olympia concert hall to war-torn Algiers during Ramadan. Heartaches—her best friend’s suicide following a bout of postpartum depression and amphetamine withdrawal, a thrilling but ill-advised one-night fling followed by a risky abortion, a long-term and inevitably terminal affair with a married man, her father’s fatal heart attack—are sprinkled in for good measure, adding necessary depth and meaning to what could otherwise seem like a fluff piece about a privileged college girl’s adventures and misadventures abroad. Told in first-person and including details similar to Fuerst’s life (like her protagonist, Fuerst is from “the Mistake by the Lake” and spent more than 20 years living in Paris), it’s hard not to imagine the book as a quasi-memoir, especially since the descriptions of smells, sounds and sights teem with such life and verve so as to suggest firsthand experience. As an added bonus, Fuerst balances out the narrative with three chapters that give a sociological overview of the Silent Generation (Barbara’s generation and, presumably, the author’s). While these interruptions initially seem out of place within the confines of the story, the topics covered provide interesting cultural references (wool bathing suits, the publication of the Kinsey Report, Levittown) and insights into a generation that is often overshadowed or misunderstood.
Look beyond its misleading title; this potential sleeper hit has about as much to do with LSD as the French do with Cool Whip.Pub Date: June 11, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615617459
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Dolmen Books
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.
A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.
Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hastings Creations Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
