The Perfect Age: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Calling All Editors!
Review: As a first-time novelist, Ms. Skyler certainly needed an editor yet this book seems to be woefully lacking an expert touch. How else to explain a story that only weakly links several, smaller stories? Yes, all the characters belong to the same family but Skyler fails to plumb below that surface to reveal meaningful resonance. The fact that both Helen and her mom are embarking on new sexual relationships could be very interesting, but Skyler does not allow the mother/daughter relationship to explore this similarity.

Throughout "The Perfect Age," there are plot lines that appear and disappear randomly. We are first brought into a storyline suggesting that Helen's Dad is contemplating an extramarital affair, but his potential affair fizzles when Helen's mother gets the idea herself. As the book progresses, we leap from summer to summer; as we enter summer three Helen blandly observes that her mother's affair with her boss probably "did not continue through the school year, but when summer began, the little signs started to emerge once more." In between the second and last summer, however, Helen's co-lifeguard Ernestine is transformed from a virgin to a mother-to-be. Odder still, her mom now works with Helen's Dad, and feels comfortable enough asking him to ask Helen to speak to her daughter about giving up the baby?!?! Clearly, Helen and her mom are forced to confront the possibility of being pregnant, but in addition to the pregnant Ernestine, Skyler crowds the story with a broken condom, a missed period and not one, but TWO ornamental eggs.

The number of contrived intersections within the story's plotlines also make the author seem unsure of her abililty to communicate the story's message through her characters. The main story line, between Helen and Leo, is erratic and unconvincing. He loves her; she loves him; he doesn't love her; she doesn't love him. Perhaps Skyler was trying to embrace the ephemeral nature of young love, but her writing is just not compelling. Towards the end of the novel, Helen's younger sister is spotted in another neighborhood; eventually this mystery is revealed -- but not at all logically explained -- when Jenny confesses she was hired by another lifeguard to read to his sick mom. Perhaps Skyler is trying so hard to connect the various plotlines that she looses track of her story's message; with the ambiguous conclusion of the mother's affair, Skyler misses her best opportunity to deliver a strong statement.

Ultimately, I recommend skipping this book, and hoping that Skyler gets a good editor for her second novel.




Rating:
Summary: Nice title, cover...
Review: But that's pretty much where it ends. Skyler's characters are mostly unlikeable and two-dimensional, the plot is full of improbable situations which serve only to tie up loose ends when the author has written herself into a corner. The writing, IMHO, lacks any real sense of style and swings wildly between cold, factual reporting and the flighty poetics of collegiate creative writing excercises.

Now that Skyler has gotten the proverbial "semi-autobiographical first effort" out of her system, here's hoping the next one shows more focus, character development and style, and less "look, I'm a writer" self-consciousness and not-sure-how-else-to-get-out-of-this plot construction.

Rating:
Summary: (3.5) Difficult transitions
Review: Given Skyler's refreshing prose, the summer heat of Las Vegas is pivotal in The Perfect Age, the cauldron from which a family is shaped and reshaped, changing their dynamic in unexpected ways.

At fifteen, Helen is on the cusp of that youthful clumsiness that gives way to feminine grace, her angles smoothing into curves, intuiting her power over men and the youthful sexuality that draws male eyes to her lithe beauty. In the short months until Helen turns eighteen, every important issue of her young life surfaces, challenging her perceptions of the world as she has known it. Kathy, Helen's mother, has a beauty of her own, not yet a distant memory, but already tinged with a profound sadness. Carefully noting the changes in her daughter, Kathy knows a similar unrest, bored with her comfortable marriage to a predictable man.

Helen is experiencing physical love for the first time and the complexity sex adds to a relationship, the separation from her mother as protector and the safe cocoon of family are unsettling, leaving her edgy and unsure. Helen's boyfriend, Leo, a seventeen-year old drummer, senses this new found elusiveness, at once desperate to possess her and conscious that she is already slipping through his fingers. Over three summers, Helen sloughs off her youth, struggling to define boundaries with Leo, both drawn to and repulsed by their new intimacy.

Helen and Kathy are exquisitely vulnerable, Helen for her trusting innocence, Kathy for the sweet nostalgia of time passing, beauty fading with the years. The author captures their transitions perfectly, mother and daughter cautiously watching each other, unsure how to interpret their tender sexuality. They sense a profound alliance as females, delicate and fragile in this phase of their relationship.

This family drama, played out against an exotic setting, presents the usual problems, boredom, the gradual diminishing of passion, teen-age angst and mid-life crisis. The temptations are familiar, anything to avoid reality; yet the author allows her protagonists their small personal flaws, the imperfections that humanize them. As Helen embraces young womanhood, mother and daughter confront the core of their hostilities and Kathy searches for the strength to allow her daughter's first tentative steps into adult life. Skyler has her finger firmly on the pulse of this family, sensitive to the unnerving upheavals they experience over three significant summer seasons that spell an end to innocence, the beginning of a more imperfect, if more livable peace. Luan Gaines/2004.

Rating:
Summary: A Complex Tribute to Family
Review: I enjoyed this book because it covers the everyday aspects of a family which muddles along with all the external temptations (which they give into, to various degrees), but which also serve as a backdrop to the Prevailling Power of the Family Unit. The family consists of 2 teenage girls, the oldest, in particular, in various degrees of love with her teenage boyfriend, and in varying degrees of mistrust with her mother, who forms a liason with her daughter's boss at the pool. This pool manager is is a complete opposite to the mother's exacting and erudite husband who teaches Russian at the local university ( and who has longing thoughts of his own). The writer explores all of the main characters in pages of their own, giving them a resonance that is probably greater than handling them all from a single point of view.

The Las Vegas setting is interesting. There are references to the heat, the superficiality, and the schlockiness, but really the book and the events are universal. I loved the scenes with the teenager's boyfriend working in his father's clock shop. All the characters have wants that extend beyond their politically correct ones. And all the characters have admirable qualities and human frailties.

I would give the book 5 stars, but I think the writer could have jacked up the tension enough and really thrust her characters into a true dilemma, a dramatic situation. Also, some of the coincidences in the book seemed either contrived, or unimportant dramatically. All the same, I really admire Skyler's unaffected style of writing, and her obvious affection for her characters. I was very impressed with how much she could convey in few words.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: I loved this book! It had great character development. I liked the way the story unfolded. The twists and turns with the characters and storyline would make it an excellent choice for a book club discussion. It was well-written, and I'm looking forward to her next book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: I loved this book! It had great character development. I liked the way the story unfolded. The twists and turns with the characters and storyline would make it an excellent choice for a book club discussion. It was well-written, and I'm looking forward to her next book.

Rating:
Summary: My Review on "The Perfect Age"
Review: It's a very good book - I saw it in YM and I decided to read it. It captures reality and twists it just a little bit. I'd definitely recomend it.

Rating:
Summary: All that glitters is not gold
Review: The title says it all: the idea of 'sin city' is too commercial, even in an attempt to look to the real city that lies beneath the neon-shine.