An honest and genuine DIY punk-rock lesbian love story from back in the day.
An American expat haunts the streets of London, dancing to the beat of a head full of bad wiring.
Please, please, please let her get what she wants: After mining the D.C. punk scene in her debut novel 20 years ago, this follow-up by Sprecher (Sister Safety Pin, 1994, etc.) revisits the post-punk/Britpop era of 1990s London with such detail and accuracy that readers may be able to hear chords hanging in the air. When we first meet our heroine, American teenager Amanda, she’s in a sorry state. Humming with post-suicidal anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder and deadened by a cocktail of psychotropic drugs, she hallucinates two British women: a stunning brunette named Melissa and a younger, punky girl. Determined to seek out the source of her visions, she books an adventurous study-abroad trip in London, where she starts to come out of her shell. After steadfastly earning a Ph.D. in English literature in America, the now 30-something out-and-proud lesbian throws her guitar on her back and returns to London as a busker. One awful night, she interrupts a rape in progress and saves Nick, a cocky Cockney woman with damage similar to Amanda’s. They seek shelter with Nick’s doctor friend, Melissa, with whom Amanda falls instantly, rapturously in love. As the potential couple tiptoes toward each other, Amanda continues to rock the Tube, engage with London’s dangerous activist movements, rail against injustice and struggle with mental health issues. “My brain spat out intrusive thoughts faster than I could neutralize them,” she says at one particularly bad moment. “I would have given just about anything if I could have unscrewed my head and taken if off for a few minutes.” It’s a wild ride buoyed by the voice of its screwed-up, kick-ass narrator and scored by the likes of Nirvana, The Clash, Patti Smith and even Heart. Dig the E.P. on the author’s website to hear Amanda’s tunes.
An honest and genuine DIY punk-rock lesbian love story from back in the day.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55861-852-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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