Rating: 
Summary: compulsively readable, but...
Review: Men and women have spent the past 100,000 years or so trying to figure each other out and I'll readily admit that I understand less of this mystery than most other members of the species. After reading the highly acclaimed Lorrie Moore's coming of age tale, I believe that much of what I thought I knew was wrong.Benoite-Marie Carr, Berie for short, is in Paris with the husband she doesn't love. She keeps flashing back to the pivotal relationship in her life, the bond she shared with Sils Chausbee, one summer when both were 15 years old and on the verge of adulthood in 1970's Horsehearts, New York. Berie was skinny, pre-menstrual and self-conscious, where Sils was bodacious & outgoing. Days they worked togetherat a local theme park, Berie taking tickets while Sils played Cinderella. Nights they snuck out to bars or drank liquor stolen from their parents. Men would be drawn to Sils & Berie would snatch up her leftovers. Still virginal & naive, they did little more than dance with these men, until Sils met the bland motorcycle riding Mike. This new relationship put distance between them, until Sils wound up pregnant & Berie stole the money for her abortion from work. When the theft was discovered, Berie was sent off to a Christian summer camp & then to boarding school and the two lost touch with one another. Now, I think we've all known folks like Sils in our lives, or if not known them personally, we're familiar with the type on a larger scale--for convenience sake, let's call them Alphas or Illuminati. They are people with such force of will, or in Sils' case beauty, that they are nearly luminescent, with electric personalities. And we, or others, are too often content to bask in their auras or live off of the excess sparks they throw off. Such people change our lives and change the world because they are capable of diminishing our selves. These people can be great forces for good and/or evil; for every Moses, Christ, Luther, Washington, Ted Williams or Reagan there's a Jim Jones, Caesar, Robespierre, Lenin, Hitler, Charles Manson, OJ Simpson or Clinton. If we are strong willed, or lucky, enough, we choose those who are forces for good & even then, we must retain our capacity to judge these people as we judge others, rather than being swept away by them. In the relationship of Berie and Sils we see, writ small, why these people are so dangerous. Sils is no better a person than Berie. In fact, she comes across as a fairly vacuous, albeit beautiful, addlepated girl. But Berie surrenders her will to Sils and becomes her partner in delinquency. The danger arises because people like Sils are fundamentally irresponsible; they never face the consequences of their own actions. There is always a Berie, or a Marc Anthony or a Johnnie Cochran or a George Stephanopoulus there to pick up the pieces and protect them from the fallout & try to thwart justice. Their acolytes enable them to live lives largely devoid of accountability. What Moore has rendered then is a portrait of a woman who abetted the Alpha who overwhelmed her in childhood and has never moved beyond this most self-destructive relationship in her life. One of the consequences is that subsidiary characters are fairly opaque. The sections with Berie's husband, for instance, convey little to help us understand why the two are married, so who cares that the marriage is disintegrating. It's as if Moore, like Berie, was so obsessed by Sils as not to care about the rest of the novel. The other major consequence is that you just want someone to grab Berie & shake her & tell her to grow up. It's hard to sympathize with this woman who seems to be alone and friendless and trapped in an idealized past. I found the book compulsively readable, it's blessedly short, and I think Moore's a potentially interesting author, but my enjoyment of the book was limited by her seeming failure to fathom and judge the pathologies of her main characters. GRADE: C
Rating:
Summary: compulsively readable, but...
Review: Men and women have spent the past 100,000 years or so trying to figure each other out and I'll readily admit that I understand less of this mystery than most other members of the species. After reading the highly acclaimed Lorrie Moore's coming of age tale, I believe that much of what I thought I knew was wrong. Benoite-Marie Carr, Berie for short, is in Paris with the husband she doesn't love. She keeps flashing back to the pivotal relationship in her life, the bond she shared with Sils Chausbee, one summer when both were 15 years old and on the verge of adulthood in 1970's Horsehearts, New York. Berie was skinny, pre-menstrual and self-conscious, where Sils was bodacious & outgoing. Days they worked togetherat a local theme park, Berie taking tickets while Sils played Cinderella. Nights they snuck out to bars or drank liquor stolen from their parents. Men would be drawn to Sils & Berie would snatch up her leftovers. Still virginal & naive, they did little more than dance with these men, until Sils met the bland motorcycle riding Mike. This new relationship put distance between them, until Sils wound up pregnant & Berie stole the money for her abortion from work. When the theft was discovered, Berie was sent off to a Christian summer camp & then to boarding school and the two lost touch with one another. Now, I think we've all known folks like Sils in our lives, or if not known them personally, we're familiar with the type on a larger scale--for convenience sake, let's call them Alphas or Illuminati. They are people with such force of will, or in Sils' case beauty, that they are nearly luminescent, with electric personalities. And we, or others, are too often content to bask in their auras or live off of the excess sparks they throw off. Such people change our lives and change the world because they are capable of diminishing our selves. These people can be great forces for good and/or evil; for every Moses, Christ, Luther, Washington, Ted Williams or Reagan there's a Jim Jones, Caesar, Robespierre, Lenin, Hitler, Charles Manson, OJ Simpson or Clinton. If we are strong willed, or lucky, enough, we choose those who are forces for good & even then, we must retain our capacity to judge these people as we judge others, rather than being swept away by them. In the relationship of Berie and Sils we see, writ small, why these people are so dangerous. Sils is no better a person than Berie. In fact, she comes across as a fairly vacuous, albeit beautiful, addlepated girl. But Berie surrenders her will to Sils and becomes her partner in delinquency. The danger arises because people like Sils are fundamentally irresponsible; they never face the consequences of their own actions. There is always a Berie, or a Marc Anthony or a Johnnie Cochran or a George Stephanopoulus there to pick up the pieces and protect them from the fallout & try to thwart justice. Their acolytes enable them to live lives largely devoid of accountability. What Moore has rendered then is a portrait of a woman who abetted the Alpha who overwhelmed her in childhood and has never moved beyond this most self-destructive relationship in her life. One of the consequences is that subsidiary characters are fairly opaque. The sections with Berie's husband, for instance, convey little to help us understand why the two are married, so who cares that the marriage is disintegrating. It's as if Moore, like Berie, was so obsessed by Sils as not to care about the rest of the novel. The other major consequence is that you just want someone to grab Berie & shake her & tell her to grow up. It's hard to sympathize with this woman who seems to be alone and friendless and trapped in an idealized past. I found the book compulsively readable, it's blessedly short, and I think Moore's a potentially interesting author, but my enjoyment of the book was limited by her seeming failure to fathom and judge the pathologies of her main characters. GRADE: C
Rating: 
Summary: surgical fiction
Review: Moore's voice is as sharp as a surgical knife. I ran across sentences in this novel that split me open. In fact, I read the first two pages, put the thing down, read another book, read Moore's first two pages again, put it down again, read another book--and repeated several more times that procedure until I felt I could read the whole novel without being gashed open. She has a stunning talent: precision, grace, and irony. In these days when cynicism passes for irony, and the splatter-effect seems, at best, a narrative strategy, Moore writes beautiful, haunting prose, full of sadness, full of grace. I am reminded of E. Dickinson's same stance: "Before I got my eye put out,/I liked to see as well/As other Creatures that have Eyes/and know no other way."
Rating: 
Summary: Not for a Book Group
Review: Reading this book for a book group, we were greatly disappointed. The plot lacked substance and little was told about the characters. The title of the book was worked into the theme as an afterthought. We wished we had chosen another book.
Rating: 
Summary: lovely nostalgic writing
Review: The parts of this novel that take place in Berie's past are so achingly well written that even when they are funny, you are too deeply moved to laugh. The Berie in Paris in the present, though, is much harder to fathom, and her husband is nearly opaque. I felt that Moore intended Berie's decision about the marriage at the end of the novel to be a moment of insight and maturity, but instead, I couldn't figure out if she was being mature or stupidly co-dependent. Moore has a talent for outrageous sentence and paragraph building, which sometimes works and sometimes distracts. It's a beautiful novel, definitely stronger on mood and meditative nostalgia than on plot. Occasionally I found myself wishing that she'd let up on the verbal pyrotechnics and get on with the story. But I'm glad I read it, and will recommend it to friends.
Rating:
Summary: pass the Tylenol
Review: This book gave me a headache. I am a huge fan of Moore's stories but I hated this book. Moore is great but this novel highlights her flaws: a tendency towards pretentiousness, lack of cohesivenss, and characters that are often hard to sympathize with. Skip this and read her short stories, they are awesome.
Rating: 
Summary: meh, unoriginal
Review: This book is definitely interesting, but when I finished it, it still left something to be desired. The events seemed kind of random and had too little emotional reasoning backing them, as if the author were making too much of an effort to be blunt. When I read Judy Blume's "Summer Sisters," I realized that this book was almost a complete ripoff of it. Read "Summer Sisters"; it's much better.
Rating:
Summary: meh, unoriginal
Review: This book is definitely interesting, but when I finished it, it still left something to be desired. The events seemed kind of random and had too little emotional reasoning backing them, as if the author were making too much of an effort to be blunt. When I read Judy Blume's "Summer Sisters," I realized that this book was almost a complete ripoff of it. Read "Summer Sisters"; it's much better.
Rating:
Summary: Unrealistic Characters
Review: This book was a fast read but the characters and their actions were too unbelivable and unrealistic. The plot was interesting (which is the main reason I'm giving it two stars instead of one) during the flashbacks to the 1970's, but the parts in France were not interesting at all. Berie and Sils are two friends who are working through their summer vacation at The Storyland Theme Park. Sils is the pretty one who lands a job playing Cinderella, while Berie who has yet to blossom, sells tickets at the entrance gate. The boys are attracted to Sils and she gets herself into trouble. Sils wants to have an abortion but does not have enough money. Berie comes up with a scam to sell used tickets stubs and helps her friend raise the funds. The friendship between the two girls didn't seem strong enough to warrant Berie's actions, and not one of these character seemed real to me at all. The flashbacks are the only reason I continued to read this book, and eventually I found myself skipping over the French parts with Berie and her husband. Thankfully this was a fast and short read and I would not reccommend reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Unrealistic Characters
Review: This book was a fast read but the characters and their actions were too unbelivable and unrealistic. The plot was interesting (which is the main reason I'm giving it two stars instead of one) during the flashbacks to the 1970's, but the parts in France were not interesting at all. Berie and Sils are two friends who are working through their summer vacation at The Storyland Theme Park. Sils is the pretty one who lands a job playing Cinderella, while Berie who has yet to blossom, sells tickets at the entrance gate. The boys are attracted to Sils and she gets herself into trouble. Sils wants to have an abortion but does not have enough money. Berie comes up with a scam to sell used tickets stubs and helps her friend raise the funds. The friendship between the two girls didn't seem strong enough to warrant Berie's actions, and not one of these character seemed real to me at all. The flashbacks are the only reason I continued to read this book, and eventually I found myself skipping over the French parts with Berie and her husband. Thankfully this was a fast and short read and I would not reccommend reading this book.
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