“I was suddenly crazy about collecting the hands of old mannequins, and vintage etiquette books, like the 1963 edition of  Blueprints for Building Better Girls! Ray and I’d take turns reading it aloud to each other. It was hilarious how clueless these women, teetering in hells, on the cusp of the sexual revolution, were.””

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (OCT 11, 2011)

Poor Holden Caulfield. In Catcher in the Rye, he muses, “Girls. You never know what they’re going to think.” How right he was! In Elissa Schappell’s new short story collection, the old blueprints for Appropriate Female Behavior — the name of a vintage etiquette manual, 1963 edition — have all been tossed away. And now the girls and women are forced to muddle through with the new rules: Be yourself but also be what your boyfriend, parents, and girlfriends want you to be as well.

These women are survivors, some only barely, armed with caustic humor to withstand the toughest stuff that life can throw their way. In “A Dog Story,” a couple that has long tried to have a baby discover, in a routine examination, that the technician cannot locate the heartbeat. “My husband asked her to keep looking,” the wife says, “as if the baby were playing Marco Polo and had swum behind a kidney.”

In another story called “Elephant,” two women who mouth all the right clichés about how “motherhood matters,” finally get real with each other. “She was crying the way mothers learn to do. Her body betrayed nothing. There was no wiping her eyes, or heaving shoulders, no sound at all.”

And then there’s “Joy of Cooking” – with all its anti-feminist connotations. An anorexic daughter, who believes she’s in love for the first time, calls her mother in a panic, cajoling her to walk her through the steps to roasting a chicken for her boyfriend. The story veers from what, at first, seems like a traditional coming-of-age rite of passage – the passing down of menus from any mother to any daughter — to a dark tale of manipulation, guilt, lack of gratitude, and hidden angers.

Each of the stories tackles a certain female archetype: the slut, the victim, the exhausted new mother, the party girl, and the seemingly infertile woman. At first, the reader settles in, secure and comfortable that she knows where the story is heading – after all, it’s been told many times before – but wait! There’s something a little “off” about each portrayal. Take Heather school slut, for example, who is involved with a newly trimmed down, former “fat boy.” Just as she begins to develop feelings, there is a subtle betrayal and she bites back, aiming to do the utmost emotional damage – and succeeding.

We meet Heather again, in the last story, my personal favorite, “I’m only Going To Tell You This Once.” Now a mother, she must confront the reality of her coveted son becoming involved with a young woman Candy, who reminds Heather all too well of herself. In fact, a number of characters are woven into other stories: Charlotte, a girl who left girlhood after being raped, is off stage but very central to another story, where her friend Bender – a self-destructive party girl – is left to deal with the effects of what happened to Charlotte. And we find that Paige, the young mother in “Elephant,” is the sister to the anorexic girl in “Joy of Cooking.”

This is a fine collection of eight stories for mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, and for those who love them. As Heather says in the final story, “…there is no such thing as just a girl.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 8 readers
PUBLISHER:	Simon & Schuster (September 6, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Elissa Schappell
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Boys and Girls Like You and Me by Aryn Kyle

Bibliography:

• Use Me (2000)
• Blueprints for Building Better Girls (September 2011)

“It seems a perverse joke, Claire thinks, after years of saving and insuring it had not been a fire or flood or disease that brought their world down. It wasn’t global warming or terrorism, no collapsing levies or tsunamis…. Instead, for Claire and Addison and Jory, it felt quite personal, like a precisely-placed bomb destroying only their lives, leaving their neighbors and friends to stand unscathed and sympathetically gawking.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (OCT 16, 2010)

In Healer, by Carol Cassella, forty-three year old stay-at-home mom Claire Boehning had been living a charmed life with her biochemist husband, Addison, and their only daughter, fourteen-year-old Jory. After Addison sold his biotech company, he and his wife bought a beautiful lakeside house in Seattle, where Jory attended private school, took ballet lessons, and enjoyed hanging out at the mall with her friends. Suddenly, everything turns sour, and mother and daughter are forced to retreat to their vacation home in the mountains of Washington State, while Addison scrambles to recoup the losses that Claire knew nothing about until a store rejected her credit card.

One of the problems with living in a freezing summer dwelling in the middle of winter is that Claire does not have enough money to buy fuel. It will be a challenge just to keep the temperature bearable. Jory is in shock; she cannot believe that she will be living with her mother like a pauper, seeing her father intermittently, and attending a public school with kids she has never met. To make matters worse, Claire needs to find a job for the first time in fifteen years. She is a licensed doctor who quit medicine before completing her residency. Desperate for work, she takes the only position available, at a clinic where the patients are mostly migrant workers. She bones up on her rusty Spanish and scrambles to relearn the medical skills she has forgotten. Occasionally, Addison visits his wife and daughter, updating them on his efforts to find an investor who will help him get his lab running again.

Addison may have irrevocably lost his wife’s trust; certainly his pride is in ruins. Jory is still a child in many ways, and she takes out her frustration and bitterness on Claire, who is by default a single parent while her husband is busy trying to rebuild his career. As a fledgling doctor, Claire learns to live on little sleep, putting in long hours with her boss, Dr. Dan Zelaya, and his dedicated staff. Although she still loves Addison and wants to keep her family together, Claire cannot help but wonder if she can rely on a man whose imprudent decisions landed them in such a colossal mess.

This is a touching story about a family in crisis, not just financially, but also emotionally. The author goes back and forth in time, slowly filling in the back story of how Claire and Addison met, Jory’s birth, and the years leading up to the financial implosion. Cassella is a nuanced writer who skillfully sets up each scene and develops her characters and engrossing plot with care. We cannot help but sympathize with the overwhelmed protagonist, for whom no quick fix is on the horizon. Cassella sensitively explores the forces that keep families together and the misfortunes that can drive them apart. Although Claire adores her daughter, she is determined to keep her sullen adolescent in line, while letting her know how important she is to both her parents. A subplot about a Nicaraguan woman on a sad quest highlights how the haves exploit the have-nots in our society.

In fact, materialism is a central focus in Healer: How important is it to wear the latest fashions, have the most up-to-date electronic gizmos, and live in a fancy house? On the other hand, what is our responsibility to the poorest and most disenfranchised among us? Just as there are no cut-and-dried answers to these questions, Cassella offers no simple solutions to the problems plaguing the Boehnings. At least, the hardships that Claire endures help her grow from a dependent person to a self-reliant and strong-willed individual, who is no longer afraid to stand up for herself. It is always best to be prepared for the unexpected, Claire realizes: “The truth about life…is that you never know what lies around the corner.” With her strong second novel, Carol Cassella proves that her debut effort, the compelling Oxygen, was no fluke.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 38 readers
PUBLISHER:	Simon & Schuster (September 7, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Carol Cassella
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Gemini Oxygen

Bibliography:

• Oxygen (2008)
• Healer (2010)
• Gemini (March 2014)

“She told him stories, too, sprawling ones…about a baby girl who disappeared from a home that did not want her, that had not given her a name, and who survived mysteriously until she was discovered, wild, birdlike, alone in the crown of a tree, and soared from there, or fell, depending on whom you asked and when you asked him. She told him about another woman, who, legend had it, met her future husband while she was his patient, in a wheelchair and a dull hospital gown, seducing him with her sheer intensity of spirit…”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (OCT 9, 2010)

The Invisible Mountain is a gem of a novel, grounded in actual history, with a dollop of magical realism, a splash of Dickensian coincidence, with some forbidden romance and political intrigue added to the mix.

The novel opens at the turn of the 20th century in a remote Uruguayan village, when a baby is spirited away and then reappears, a year later, unharmed in the branches of a tree. The young one is named Pajarita – translated to little bird – and the narrative, divided into three sections, sequentially focuses on her, her daughter Eva, and her granddaughter Salome.

All three are strong, impassioned women, who are capable of making bold choices in order to remain authentic and true to themselves. As the century opens up with more options for women, the choices become increasingly bolder. One of the beauties of The Invisible Mountain is that the prose accurately mirrors the country of Uruguay – from a time when gentle magic lit it from within to the near-present, when the country struggled under the harsh light of despotic politics.

Each woman is named fortuitously and fulfills the destiny of her name. Each in turn, embraces passion, poetry, and politics and becomes a vessel into which De Robertis pours decades of Uruguayan and Argentinian culture and family dynamics. The magical lyricism (think: Isabel Allende or Gabriel Garcia Marquez) is replaced with the intense and painful down-to-earth images of a country that has veered from its destiny and imprisoned those with the courage to speak out.

De Robertis writes: “This Uruguay: less innocent, smaller somehow, dwarfed by the looming world, more wounded, bleeding people out through its wounds, mourning the lost blood of the exiled and the dead and also those who simply shrugged and flew away, but also stronger for its wounds, mature, tenacious, wiser about what it can withstand, with a heart that beats and people who pulse through its pathways.” She could be speaking of her characters who also mature with their hearts joyfully beating despite their wounds.

In many ways, this is a love song to Uruguay: “El Rio de la Plata’s curving motion a woman weeping against a balcony rail, the red aroma of beef roasting at las brasas at the corner bar…Montevideo’s sleepy beauties and its daily return into her skin.” In equally powerful ways, it’s a celebration of women, particularly mother-daughter relationships and how they evolve and endure.

If there is a flaw in this novel, it is in the depiction of the male characters. The author was, at one time, a rape crisis counselor; perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the vast majority of men are depicted as abusive, inebriated, unfaithful, and downright violent. There is one notable exception, but that character’s story is told inorganically; from both an economic and psychological perspective, the character’s decision – and the results stemming from that decision – would be highly unlikely in the real world.

But as I closed the pages, I was left with the feeling that this multi-generational saga is assuredly destined to stand among the finest debut works, with a tone that is often elegiac and a theme that is truly of the ages.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 40 readers
PUBLISHER:	Vintage; 1 Reprint edition (August 10, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Carolina de Robertis
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Classic Latin American Magical Realism: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

Bibliography:

• The Invisible Mountain (August 2009)

“There are so many evils that pull on our children.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (APR 15, 2010)

If you are at all familiar with any of Anne Lamott’s books, Imperfect Birds will have a very familiar ring to it. It tackles the themes of addiction, spirituality, 12- step programs and enabling.

The novel is about Rosie,  now a 17 year-old adolescent who has her parents wrapped around her fingers. She is heavily into drugs and alcohol but is lying to her parents about the extent of her substance use, cheating on her urinalyses. She is a great manipulator and excellent with triangulation. Her mother, Elizabeth, and her step-father James, are at their wit’s ends. Rosie’s father, Andrew, died when she was a young child.

Elizabeth is a recovering alcoholic who has two years clean time. She has a feeling of emptiness and has never felt whole since Andrew died. Her rocky relationship with Rosie makes her feel fragile and distrustful of her own gut feelings. James is very grounded and tries to get Elizabeth to be more secure in her boundaries with Rosie and to trust her instincts, not to any great avail.

Rosie has two best friends, Alice and Jodie. As the book opens, Jodie has just completed three months at a rehab facility. They are all three using drugs and sometimes trading sex for drugs. They don’t use condoms and seem unaware of the dangers of unsafe sex.

Elizabeth doesn’t work outside the home. She and the family live in the vicinity of Marin County. James has a weekly show on National Public Radio and has published one novel. Up to this time, Elizabeth has considered herself his muse and now feels lost, her place in the family insecure. Marital stress is at an all time high due to Rosie’s lying, splitting and manipulation. Elizabeth, especially, is very enabling of Rosie’s behaviors.

The book discusses a lot about recovery and there is a lot of spirituality-centered talk in it as well. Elizabeth’s best friends are ministers and they are the ones that Rosie is referred to for counseling. Elizabeth, James, and their friends all used to drink together years ago and are all in recovery. Elizabeth is active in Alcoholics Anonymous. Additionally, she suffers from depression and is on medication for her psychiatric issues.

Rosie tests Jame’s and Elizabeth’s limits to the max. She breaks curfew, sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night, asks Elizabeth to withhold information from James, and generally lies, steals, and is rude, disrespectful and snide to both Elizabeth and James. She is a bright girl who is a whiz at physics who also reads Robertson Davies and Maria Rilke. Despite her intelligence, she has little or no insight about the extent of her substance problems.

The author does an excellent job of showing the strain and difficulties posed by a drug abusing adolescent. There is too much about spirituality for my taste, but this is to be expected in a book written by Lamott.

The novel very excellently shows the grip of addiction, the pain that it causes loved ones and the strains it puts on marital and family relationships. Lamott is the perfect writer to tackle a topic like this, a topic that is harrowing, frightening and life-threatening. This is a good book, one that every parent will benefit from.

* Editor’s note:  Rosie is the same character that appears in Rosie (1983) at age 5 and then in Crooked Little Heart (1997) at age 13.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 17 readers
PUBLISHER:	Riverhead Hardcover (April 6, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	Imperfect Birds
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Anne Lamont Fan Page
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Made me think of this book: Blame by Michele Huneven

Bibliography:

• Hard Laughter (1980)
• Rosie (1983)
• Joe Jones (1985)
• All New People (1989)
• Crooked Little Heart (1997)
• Blue Shoe (2002)
• Imperfect Birds (April 2010)

Non-fiction:

• Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year (1993)
• Bird by Bird : Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)
• Traveling Mercies : Some Thoughts on Faith (1999)
• Plan B : Further Thoughts on Faith (2005)
• Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith (2007)

“Many of the soldiers must have stolen food. I would have. If that little boy shooting people with his finger had an apple in his pocket, I would grab his wrist hard and make him give it to me. Of course, I’d wait until we were out of sight of everyone. I decide not to say anything about being hungry. I imagine the dead Confederates, so thick on the road that the Yankees said they could walk down the whole length of it without stepping on anything but dead Rebels.”

Book Review:

Review by Debbie Lee Wesselmann (NOV 29, 2009)

Set in the 1960s, Amanda C. Gable’s debut novel spans two pivotal times in American history: the Civil War and the century-later Civil Rights movement. Eleven year old Kat, a Civil War buff, finds herself on a sudden trip from Marietta, Georgia to Maine with her manic-depressive mother who has decided to start her own antiques store up north. At first, Kat believes that they are on vacation, but the signs are immediately evident to the reader: her mother is leaving her father. Not until days later does Kat discover that her mother intends for this move to be permanent. Kat, loyal to her mother as well as to those family members left behind, finds herself emotionally under siege.

Like many children of dysfunctional parents, Kat knows how to take charge when necessary, and she convinces her mother that the best places to buy antiques on their way north are in the smaller, back-route towns. Her mother acquiesces – she is all too happy to be cared for – and so she gives Kat the navigator job. Kat plots a route that takes them through the major battlefields of the Civil War, from Appomattox to Gettysburg, enabling her to imagine that she is a Confederate general taking charge of the troops. This fantasy cast in another time provides a coping mechanism for the young girl as her mother’s actions become less and less reliable and Kat is forced into a caretaker role. It also acknowledges on a subconscious level that she cannot win, no matter how resourceful or brave or cunning she is. Although the “campaign” is doomed on one level – one cannot run from the past – it provides a unique opportunity for Kat to discover her own independence and some truths about her mother.

Author Gable creates a convincing eleven-year-old point-of-view that is both observant and yet not fully aware of the subtleties of the adult world. The mother-daughter journey, even though it makes Kat more vulnerable to dangers, fosters the innate strength that Kat harbors, thanks in part to a better role model, her Aunt Laura, who appears as a strong, intelligent presence in flashbacks. Even in the midst of fantasy, Kat is more realistic than her mother ever will be.

The Confederate General passages are often clever mixes of Civil War history and glimpses into the more private civil war between Kat and her mother; however, these brief passages are the least compelling aspect of the novel, as they do not add much to our understanding of either the girl or the war. More successful are Kat’s exploration of battlefields and the stories they hold. The strangers she encounters at these sites, people who are equally drawn to this part of American history, compose a portrait of a country in flux as the politics of the sixties set the stage for major changes. In addition to mention of civil rights and the continuing division between North and South, another coming “war” is hinted at: the Women’s Rights Movement. After all, Kat casts herself as a female general, and those who protect and educate her are all feisty, intelligent, and resourceful women.

This quiet portrait of a young girl prematurely on the cusp of adulthood and her relationship with her struggling mother reflects the larger battle of a country grappling with its own issues. The divisions between sides may have historical precedence, but, as Kat hopes, perhaps history is not always destined to repeat itself.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Scribner (August 11, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Debbie Lee Wesselmann
AMAZON PAGE:	The Confederate General Rides North
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Amanda C. Gable
EXTRA	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another Feisty 11-year-old: Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Brady ———— Civil War Fiction: The Wolf Pit by Marly Youmans Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles ———— Civil Rights fiction: Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund

Bibliography:

• The Confederate General Rides North (August 2009)

“I should have told you that a long time ago.” Her mother rests her back against the pillows. “I should have told you how beautiful you are,” she says softly.

When Anna was fifteen, the brother of one of her friends from school held her hand and said, “You are the prettiest of my sister’s friends.” She felt a surge of irrational happiness then. This is the feeling Anna finally recognizes in the confusion of emotions that swirl through her. Will they talk now? Will they have closure?

But the timbre of her mother’s voice changes, the softness that was there evaporates. “I’m sure I didn’t need to tell you that,” she says. No emotion, a chastisement even.

Book Review:

Review by Ann Wilkes ( NOV 14, 2009)

SPECIAL:  MF Author Interview

Anna In-Between is a novel about an unmarried, Caribbean woman in her late thirties, Anna Sinclair, who begins to understand herself as she comes to understand her parents. The novel explores issues of caste, race and culture in a moving, deeply poignant tale of mother and daughter. Anna goes back to the island of her birth as she does every year, but this time she stays for a month to spend more time with her aging parents. Her mother, Beatrice, reveals to Anna that she has a lump on her breast – one for which she has not sought treatment. Beatrice has not even mentioned it to her own husband, though she knows he sees it. And he doesn’t say a word about it, either. He respects her privacy. The whole “elephant in the living room” thing is hard for a modern American to comprehend, especially when we’re talking – or not talking about – a life-threatening disease.

Anna grew up in an upper-class neighborhood among Englishmen who didn’t accept her because of her black skin. In New York, she doesn’t quite belong either, being from a very different culture and lineage than most Afro-Americans, with her Amerindian, European, African, Indian and Chinese blood. And the influences of the New York culture over time make her feel even more alien when she goes home to the Caribbean to visit.

Beatrice fights against social mores and long-held Victorian tradition in order to accept help for her cancer. Still, she can’t bring herself to travel to the States to better medical facilities and doctors because  blacks are still second class citizens there.

Anna’s insecurities come through as she analyzes her mother’s every word and gesture for hidden meaning. And hidden meanings abound, but are not outnumbered by her mother’s overt manipulations and judgments. Anna’s extremely convincing inner dialog felt like something beyond truth, more raw and intimate.

Nunez draws on her recollections and experiences from growing up in Trinidad to weave a sensual sense of place throughout the novel. When I read Daphne DuMaurier, I wanted to go to Cornwall, when I read Eugenia Price’s St. Simons Trilogy I wanted to visit St. Simons, Georgia. Now Nunez has infused me with longing to see the Caribbean and get to know its people that have such a rich and tumultuous history.

I highly recommend Anna In-Between, especially to women, because Nunez captures the mother-daughter dynamic so well. And to anyone who struggles with finding where they belong.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Akashic Books (September 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Ann Wilkes
AMAZON PAGE:	Anna In-Between
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Allbc page on Elizabeth Nunez Akashic Books page on Anna In-Between
EXTRAS:	MostlyFiction.com interview with Elizabeth Nunez
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Caribbean authors:Edwidge Danticat Nalo Hopkinson Donna Hemans Jamaica Kincaid

Bibliography:

• Beyond the Limbo Silence 1998)
• Bruised Hisbiscus (2000)
• Discretion (2002)
• Grace (2003)
• Prospero’s Daughter (2006)
• Anna In-Between (September 2009)

Other:

• Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad (2005)

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