I had heard about this novel – who can forget that title? – and, so when I saw it at Readings I had to buy it.
Here’s the blurb …
In this moving, poignant novel by the bestselling author of Birds of America we share a grown woman’s bittersweet nostalgia for the wildness of her youth.
The summer Berie was fifteen, she and her best friend Sils had jobs at Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sold tickets to see the beautiful Sils portray Cinderella in a strapless evening gown. They spent their breaks smoking, joking, and gossiping. After work they followed their own reckless rules, teasing the fun out of small town life, sleeping in the family station wagon, and drinking borrowed liquor from old mayonnaise jars. But no matter how wild, they always managed to escape any real danger—until the adoring Berie sees that Sils really does need her help—and then everything changes.
First, this book is beautifully written – witty and thoughtful. For me, it was about the intense friendships and expectations of young women countered by the disillusions of middle-age. Ordinary people living their lives and have the occasional extraordinary experience. This is one of my favourite novels this year.
Here are some of my favourite quotes:
I often think that at the centre of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives I can only guess at now, that it leaves me with the impression I am simply a collection of them, that they all existed for themselves, but had inadvertently formed me, then vanished. But, what: Should I have been expected to create my own self, out of nothing, out of thin, thin air and alone?
In his iconic way our father remained very much ours, And in the long shadows of his neglect, we fashioned our own selves, quietly improvised our own rules, as kids did in America, in the fatherless fifties and sixties.
When later in life she [Sils] would appear – in a dream with a group of people; or in a thought about friends I never saw anymore, those I had consented to lose and live without…
She was, probably, the nicest person I had ever known. Yet in the years following, for myself, I abandoned even believing in niceness or being nice. I could scarcely control myself, wherever I was, from telling everyone, anyone, what I thought of them. It was an urge, a compulsion, my tongue bitten a futile blue.
I read in this article, that the novel’s title comes from a painting Ms Moore bought.