A trauma-filled book that misses the mark due to a frustrating lack of resolution.
In her debut novel, Murray chronicles the troubled life of a baby boomer who faces relentless travails, including sexual abuse and an unplanned teen pregnancy.
Sally Smithfield was born in 1961 in a leafy suburban neighborhood on Chicago’s North Shore, the youngest of four children. Her abusive, unbalanced mother scapegoats her, and the rest of the family marginalizes her. For years, her father’s cousin and best friend, Bill Redmond, secretly sexually assaults and rapes her; when she hints to her family members that Bill might not be as nice as he seems, they accuse her of being typically “moody” and “a pill.” When Bill later has a fatal car accident, only Sally is pleased and relieved. After nine years of restrictive, parochial education, she attends public high school, succeeds academically, and, as a sophomore, begins dating a handsome senior named Steve. She falls hard for him, and, in the tradition of YA novels, they have an encounter on a beach as the Bee Gees song “How Deep is Your Love” plays on the radio: “Their lips met in a long, tender kiss until their scents merged and they became one person through shared passion.” The resultant pregnancy, which Sally never reveals to Steve, forces her to relocate to St. Mary’s Catholic Charities Home for Unwed Mothers in St. Louis. She fantasizes about life with her baby, but instead, the newborn is sent to an adoptive family, causing Sally irreparable anguish. In a succession of highly improbable, unconvincing events, some characters face tragedy and others are punished. Also, despite horrendous lifelong treatment, Sally still lives with her mother until she dies. There’s no satisfying rapprochement; no one ever divulges any truths. Certain facts are revealed after Sally’s mother’s death but in a perfunctory, mundane way that lacks any dramatic tension or surprise. The frequent cultural references are appealing and occasionally humorous, though, as when two Smithfield siblings take their 75-year-old provincial grandmother to see the movie Annie Hall.
A trauma-filled book that misses the mark due to a frustrating lack of resolution.Pub Date: April 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4835-6035-9
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Book Baby
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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