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HOW TO BE A CHICANA ROLE MODEL

Name: HOW TO BE A CHICANA ROLE MODEL
Author: Michele Serros
ISBN: 1-57322-824-9

by Michele Serros ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 10, 2000

An interesting—and maybe even a promising—start

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Serros (Chicana Falsa, not reviewed) offers an unusual second “fiction,” a work that defies single classification. The story of “Michele Serros,” it’s a sly, hyperkinetic romp that’s part story collection, part stand-up comedy, part self-help for aspiring writers.

Instead of chapters, Serros supplies the reader with 13 “rules” that could have come under the heading “I Didn't Know It Would Be This Way.” Serros’s road to UCLA and publication is pockmarked with misconceptions, some hilarious, others sad. Asked to attend a Chicana writers’ conference, she arrives to discover that she’s been hired to serve food, not read her poetry. But this energetic young woman doesn’t let the croissants or an apron stop her from reading at open mike, after which a small-press publisher offers his card, prints her book, then leaves her with boxes of copies to hawk on her own. No matter what she does, Serros is alternately confused and amused by the contradictions around her. She’s hired to model for an artist because of her Mexican nose, the one feature she dislikes most in herself. Fellow Latinos and Latinas frown upon her for not speaking Spanish well, yet she receives instructions from a fan urging her to be more “universal” by dropping the Spanish from her work. Even her friend Martha Reyes tells her to “make yourself less Mexican, less girl” in trying to insure Serros a reading public. The best rule, however, comes from Aunt Tura: “If you want a real story, you need to look in your own backyard more often.” Indeed, only when Serros creates vivid family scenes are we drawn effortlessly into a world she cares about. Once her defensive guard is down, her gift for dialogue emerges, along with that rare ability to move readers toward complexity of emotion and thought—the things that make this not quite accomplished yet exciting new “fiction” distinctive.

An interesting—and maybe even a promising—start

Pub Date: July 10, 2000

ISBN: 1-57322-824-9

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.