An attempt at a sub-subgenre of clit lit where women hate being women but love women and hate them at the same time. But it...
Veteran punkrocker Breedlove debuts in print with the story of—surprise—a punkrocker looking for love but finding only sex in a sub-America chock-full of “hags.”
“Jim” is a lesbian punkrocker and a druggie bike messenger in San Francisco. She’s “a regular Major Tom, an Annie Oakley who rides all day and shoots all night.” We follow her here through apparently random and inconsequential events, drug-trips, happenstance encounters with people who have names like Eurobabe, Diamonds, Ally Cat, Pez, Smash, Devastaysha, and The Despondent One. These encounters trigger memories that are just as random and happenstance but that detail Jim’s life as that of a person is far more confident and far less confused than she ought to be. She watches friends turn tricks, delivers lots of unprompted drug-shooting advice, visits her own rundown flat, recounts her latest run-in with the police, dreams about being a man, has a number of affairs with fellow hags, dumpster dines, has a lip pierced, and eventually travels cross-country with a band called Hostile Mucous, driving with the group to LA, New Orleans, Florida, New England, and New York for lots more sex in bathrooms, ever more speed trips, and the occasional riff on love in a modern America. Breedlove writes with the glee of a child giddy over seeing her face on the screen or her name in print; it’s literature as a game of dress-up. She is actually best at the simple, quiet, yet harrowing moments of life that she actively avoids in favor of hackneyed drug pyrotechnics. What emerges is an anti-story whose main riddle is whether what is happening is actually happening or whether it’s all an orgiastic drug fantasy that devalues the plot we non-hags are suspected of craving.
An attempt at a sub-subgenre of clit lit where women hate being women but love women and hate them at the same time. But it won’t work until it gets real.Pub Date: April 10, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-28680-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
© Copyright 2025 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.
