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400+ pages and only allusions to sex. Just when I thought we were getting to the good stuff.
I sort of struggled through it, forced myself to finish it. The first thing I noticed was all the characters' personalities kind of melted together, the dialogue did not provide them with individual voices, poor character development.
I am a first time reader of Dorothy Allison, and I was not at all impressed with this novel. And so many important scenes of real ACTION were left out and just referred to.
The girls as children spoke just the same as the adults - clearly not age appropriate language. New characters continually appeared, which made me stumble.
And lastly, the novel could be dirtier. Please.
Bought this on a clearance rack and can now see why it hadn't sold. I've never read any of Allison's other novels, but after reading this one, I don't think I'll jump on the chance. The characters were unexciting, and the story dragged on and on. I read 4 books while having this one unfinished on my night stand. Dede was the most interesting character, and even she couldn't keep me involved.
Another "Top of the list". The first 50-75 pgs were a little slow, but then I didn't want to put it down.The way the story weaves the lives of Mom and daughter, leaving the life they knew in CA behind, to search the two daughters left behind in GA. is sad, intriguing, cryptic and dynamic all in one.Recommended, just to see how the lives of the women of Cayro, Georgia come out on Top, together.
Meandering, yes; unfocused, perhaps--but I suppose, so is life, and there is no denying the recognizable realness of the four lead characters. Her two sisters, the religiously righteous Amanda and the amorally rebellious Dede, confront emotional upheavals that challenge the extremes of their worldviews.
Yet somehow Allison holds everything together in this deeply collective portrait of a mother and her three daughters and the often troubled, sometimes impoverished lives they lead.The novel has the feel of a multigenerational saga, but its span is barely a decade (with a few flashbacks to an earlier era). A trilogy of sorts, the book presents a series of interrelated family crises; its tragedies and triumphs occur at seemingly random and usually unexpected moments.
"Caveweller," Dorothy Allison's second novel, is nearly overwhelmed by the number of stories it relates. Cissy discovers the escapist joy of spelunking, exploring the dark wombs of local caves and losing herself in the odd comfort of pitch-blackness.
Newly widowed, Delia Byrd, a recovering singer from a briefly famous rock band, flees with her daughter Cissy to her hometown in Georgia and attempts to reconcile herself with the two daughters she left to a violent husband from an earlier marriage. A claustrophobic tension permeates the resulting relationships: the townsfolk despise this prodigal woman who "abandoned" her daughters for a spin in the limelight; Cissy is homesick for her friends in the fast life in Los Angeles; Delia's first husband is dying of cancer; and her two daughters, with the support of their grandmother, despise and ignore the mother they never knew.Then the novel shifts both perspective and gears, slowing down quite a bit to focus on the journey through adolescence by Delia's three daughters.
And hovering in the background are neighborhood women who offer guidance and love to the four women, as well as humor and insight to the reader.Fleeting fame, domestic violence, rural poverty, troubled romance, moral ambiguity, Southern life, and a veneer of folk rock--Allison is so casual about linking her themes and her stories, that there are moments (particular after the climatic "resolution" of Delia's homecoming) that the book almost doesn't cohere. And, in the end, everything comes together, surprisingly yet satisfyingly.
Ugh. This book was a gift, so of course I read it. Don't waste your time. I read it a year ago and it still sticks in my head as one of the worst books I have read in quite some time.
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