An overly episodic story that still captures the fear, excitement, and eroticism of a young lesbian’s awakening in the 1940s.
In this debut historical novel, a girl seeks stardom on Broadway but instead discovers unexpected feelings when she meets a charismatic lesbian singer.
Alice “Al” Huffman has just graduated from high school in June 1941. She and her best friend, Aggie Wright, giddily depart the potato fields of Long Island for New York City, following their boyfriends Danny Boyd and Dickie Dunn. They all plan to act on Broadway except for Danny, who wants to write novels. For Al, moving is also a chance “to start my life away from the mother who tried to kill me” and to see new sights, such as celebrities and “real homosexuals.” The foursome’s prospects brighten when they meet Broadway producer Maxwell P. Harlington III, who offers his services. Soon, Al is intrigued and unsettled by Juliana Styles, a singer whose voice sounds “like warm milk slipping down the whole of my body,” but she tries to block out such thoughts. She believes that marrying Danny will give her security—but then she discovers Danny naked in Max’s apartment, and soon after, she has an encounter with Juliana, which results in Al’s first orgasm. Wartime brings changes to the foursome’s relationship, and Al’s misgivings about exploring her sexuality deepen. As the book ends, Al has new hopes, both for her producing career and for her relationship with Juliana. Playwright Vanda (The Forgetting Curve, 2014, etc.) offers a well-researched, richly textured look at LGBTQ life in 1940s New York City, a time when women could get into trouble just for wearing trousers. She gives a good sense of the gay world’s sub rosa signals, codes, secret celebrities, and in-jokes. Her dialogue, fittingly for a playwright, is sharp and does much to aid characterization and add historical flavor; for example, unsophisticated Al expresses her reactions to an erotic explosion with “Oh, gosh, gosh, oh, gosh, gosh.” However, the plot largely lacks structure; important encounters often happen by chance, and many events could have been shaped and condensed to greater effect.
An overly episodic story that still captures the fear, excitement, and eroticism of a young lesbian’s awakening in the 1940s.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5137-0221-6
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Booktrope Editions
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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