by Kat Meads
Book Review by Carol WolvertonKitty
Duncan’s life isn’t invented at all. She can be found regularly
baking biscuits 5:30 a.m. at your local trans-fat emporium. That
she’s Southern, smart-mouthed, and free-assed makes her interesting
but far from remarkable – or rare. There is the typical Southern
early marriage and early baby. “Just say no” doesn’t apply. A
frustrated newspaper reporter serves as narrator with a
tenuous-at-best connection – in several ways. Why she’s drawn back
years later puzzles the reader and is never answered logically.
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe logic is missing for the whole group.
What that narrator learns when she returns is the same lesson we all
learn if/when we attend a high school reunion many years after
graduation– that several of those pain-in-the-posterior classmates
grew up to become tolerable human beings. In her own limited way,
the truculent Kitty does exactly that.
Characterization skills and language use define
this novel. We all have a Phyllis in our lives somewhere “shoulding”
and “oughting” at us. We feel Pauline growing ulcers as she
nervously obsesses on the “right” image and the right decision.
Later, she abandons her image concerns, again without logic. Calvin
is magnificent with his visage continually under mental fire –
literally. There is no plot suspense, but there is Aaron, who
abandons Trotsky for lust and Calvin who abandons fundamentalist
parents for more lust. I sense the author has read Joyce Carol
Oates and seeks to create characters of the Let Me Take you
There ilk.
Interspersed lurk dramatic asides. An
unexplained voice asks and answers questions. “Would a different
answer have altered the course of coming events? Sadly, no.” Who is
saying this? The first person narrator is nowhere around. “Let’s
take a moment to review.” Why? Is this a lecture? There’s no way the
narrator can know what’s happening at the beach or elsewhere –
particularly what’s in somebody’s head. Perhaps the novel would be
better served by a reigning vendetta or two, a quest to recover
stolen funds or a stolen life, a burning gut desire (beyond sex),
and a plot that drives and defines the experience.
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