Rechy's ninth novel (Marilyn's Daughter, City of Night, etc.) follows a Mexican-American woman through a day of tribulations in L.A.: it's a credible portrait, mixing Rechy's usual religious fascination with a gritty picture of life on the cusp in a greedy, success-oriented society. Amalia Gomez, in her mid-40s, lives in a stucco bungalow in Hollywood. Her life, a struggle to support Gloria, 15 (``using words even men would blush to hear''), and Juan, 17 (``Was he selling roca?''), is vividly rendered: ``Daily she moistened her thick eyelashes with saliva, to preserve the curl.'' The account begins with her impression of a silver cross in the sky and the possibility of a visitation from the Virgin; meanwhile, Amalia lives with Reynaldo, ``the only one of her men who had never hit her,'' and still mourns the death of oldest son Manny (who appeared as a barrio kid with an oversexed mother in Rechy's Bodies and Souls). The flashback to her growing-up time in El Paso becomes a mini-course in miracles, the ``mysteries of the Catechism,'' as she survives a drunken father, rapes and two divorces, and, in California, the ``sun-glassed Anglo police,'' who harass her if she works (cleaning) ``after hours in exclusive areas.'' Manny, after a series of altercations and a stint in a juvenile home, hangs himself in his jail cell; her daughter comes of age; Amalia loses herself in TV soaps and imagines tabloid headlines: ``AMALIA GOMEZ OF HOLLYWOOD CLAIMS VISITATION BY THE HOLY MOTHER!'' Surviving male humiliation (``A viejo like you should be grateful that a man like me even looks at her''), she's grabbed by a man with a gun in an L.A. shopping mall but survives to witness yet another visitation- -one she takes as gospel. One of Rechy's better efforts: this one survives some murkiness and a contrived climax because it dramatizes and integrates its sociological concerns.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 1-55970-115-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pain, grief, and hurt are all part of life in this moving portrayal of the many forms love can take.
An isolated, prickly septuagenarian in London who has lost her husband works to overcome her fears that she is a burden to those around her.
Millicent Carmichael—Missy—married the man she loved, Leo, in 1959. But after a half-century of living, loving, and growing older in a huge house in Stoke Newington, London, he is gone, and she is bereft. Her son and grandson, both of whom she dotes on, live more than 9,000 miles away in Australia, and she is recently estranged from her daughter, who lives nearby in Cambridge. Missy is a difficult person with sharp edges—she knows this, her Leo knew this—and she is at loose ends, having lived in a community for all this time without getting to know anyone because she held so tightly to her family she made no time for anyone else. But now, the loneliness is crushing her. A few life-changing moments happen in quick succession: She faints in the park and meets neighbor Sylvie, who kindly sits with her for a bit; her home is robbed while she feigns sleep; and she agrees to do a favor for brusque neighbor Angela—journalist, friend of Sylvie, and single mother to Otis. And so Missy finds herself tending to a vivacious dog of indeterminate breed, Bob, that she neither wanted nor feels capable of taking care of. Debut author Morrey has deftly created a series of love stories, interwoven together and told in snippets through time: Missy’s undying devotion to Leo, despite his—and her—many flaws; her devotion to her children, which she often isn’t able to verbalize; and her growing niche in the community that Bob—her Bobby, her unexpected companion and confidant—introduces her to during their daily walks. There are no saccharine moments to mar this tale.
Pain, grief, and hurt are all part of life in this moving portrayal of the many forms love can take.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54244-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Most enjoyable for its smart, often humorous details about moviemaking and celebrity culture.
A portrait of the actress as a young woman.
We meet Molly Bit in a chapter called "College: 1993." It’s an arts school where “everybody wanted to be famous…and if they didn’t get famous, they might die right there in their beds.” Unlike the other kids, Molly Bit has no doubt that she will hit the mark, and after a brief second chapter called "Dues: 1997," we arrive at "Success: 2001." By now, Molly has made two movies with her best friend and has appeared in a three-page photo spread in Vanity Fair titled “Girl From the Future: Why in Six Months Everyone Will Know Who Molly Bit Is.” This proves to be no exaggeration—she soon reaches mega-star status, with the action figures and tabloid exposés to prove it. By "Venice: 2006," she’s got a publicist, a personal assistant, and a bodyguard she’s paying 50,000 euros for four days—because she also has a very persistent stalker. The plot of Bevacqua’s debut has a dramatic twist two-thirds of the way through, but there’s something a bit mechanical about it, and subsequent sections lose momentum. Though the author sets out to reveal the human being inside a Hollywood legend, Molly never quite comes into focus. We spend a fair amount of time inside her head, but her thoughts have a generic quality: “Southern California tried to rob you of your deep interiority. LA did. Hollywood. It was impossible not to lose at least some of it, for shallow thoughts and conversations to cast a spell that sealed a layer off. For six months she’d been contemplating an ass lift.” This feels more like a hypothesis about what an actress would think than what one specific, fully realized character thinks.
Most enjoyable for its smart, often humorous details about moviemaking and celebrity culture.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-0458-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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