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Summary: one to get happily lost in
Review: the narrative tone of this book takes me back to my infatuation with the series "my so-called life." the characters are alive and the author tells this story in a comforable, familiar way that makes me crave for more! bravo to baggott!!
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Summary: A brilliant and lively novel
Review: I could not put this book down. I was hooked from the first sentence. I particularly liked the way the mother unfolded her life like it was a delicate piece of gold foil. The mother was definitly peculiar but her daughter lissy handled it all beautifully. I really enjoyed all the people they visited during the summer that never was. The couple with the dog who had to wear a "halo" were hilarious. This novel is engaging and heart-felt. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys books about mother/daughter realtionships with just a little "spice" thrown in.
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Summary: A Snappy First Novel With A Surprising Subplot
Review: I purchased this novel after hearing several favorable reviews of it. I was not disappointed! A teenage girl learns lifes lessons from her mother one summer as they await her father's return from from a romantic fling. She reflects on this summer as a thirty year old who is afraid that she is becoming her mother. I will not give away the surprising subplot, but I will tell you that I draws several powerful parallels from the works of Dosteyevsky, Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Clancy. Bravo! Encore! Encore!
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Summary: You don't want this book to end.
Review: GIRL TALK is the kind of book you don't want to put down and don't want to finish--all at the same time. Remarkable and memorable characters come to life in the course of Lissy Jablonski's wry narrative looking back at the summer her father disappeared and returned and all the past and future events that would connect to that time. Julianna Baggott's writing is addictive in this novel because she makes every description, every bit of dialogue, every scene count. This is a book to buy for any of your friends--women or men--who love a great story that keeps the reader guessing and is full of surprises that always seem absolutely right.
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Summary: Beautifully written
Review: Gorgeous book, just beautifully written. Some of Ms. Baggott's images are so wonderful - I specifically loved the idea of Lissy's mother telling her her 'truths' like a mafia don opening up his violin case and displaying his gun.There are so many beautiful scenes in this book, and so many heart-wrenching moments it was hard for me to believe this is Ms. Baggott's first novel. You can, however, tell she is a poet as her fiction cries out like a poem. I can't say enough about this book. Lissy captured my heart from the very first chapter and I loved her and her crazy mother so much that I read the book in one sitting (just over 4 hours), because I was desperate to find out what happened. You will not be disappointed if you buy this book.
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Summary: Wonderful Debut Novel
Review: In the summer of 1985, when Lissy Jablonski was fifteen years old, her father, a quiet, unassuming gynechologist with a wooden leg left town and ran off with a redheaded bank teller. So her mother decided they should pack up the car and head out of Keene, New Hampshire on an adventure of their own. This was the summer of "girl talks", the summer her mother let down her guard and began to tell Lissy the secrets and truths of her life. Now fifteen years later, Lissy is facing a crisis of her own, the death of her father, an unwanted pregnancy and the end of her affair with a married lover. Now as she looks back at her life, she realizes that so much of who she is and the decisions she makes, began that fifteenth summer..... Julianna Bagott has written a spectacular first novel about women, their lives, loves, relationships and choices that grabs you from page one and keeps you turning pages to the end. Her eloquent writing is crisp and spare and full of witty and irreverent dialogue and humor and her scenes are vivid and riveting. But it's her beautifully well drawn, true to life characters that really make this novel special. Girl Talk is a story of love, loss, betrayal and forgiveness told with great insight and wisdom; a complicated story about life and the human condition that everyone will be able to identify with.
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Summary: An exciting debut!
Review: I loved this debut novel by a new, sharp literary talent. The characters couldn't have been more real. Quirky, likeable and downright fun to be with. I especially loved Lissy's mother and delighted in the adventure she takes her daughter on during the summer that never happened. A must read! I look forward to Ms. Baggott's second novel.
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Summary: Sharp witty insights into the realities of love and loss...
Review: This first novel by Julianna Baggott is more than a fresh, witty coming-of-age story. There are sharp insights into the realities of love and loss as well as some comic views of middle-class American life all told through the eyes of a young woman born in 1970. When Lizzy Jablonski was 15 in 1985, her father disappeared one summer with a red-headed bank teller. Lizzy and her mother then set out on a little trip of their own, their "girl talks" during this period teaching Lizzy more than she ever wanted to know about the secrets of her mother's life. Fifteen years later, Lizzy looks back on that special summer with new perspective, realizing how much she is like her mother as she deals with her own life. This seems like a simple story, but there are threads throughout that show a deep understanding of the human condition. There were parts that made me chuckle, but it was a chuckle of recognition of some nuance of experience that Ms. Baggott was able to capture with just a few lines of well placed dialog or description. The book flashes back between the teenage girl's experience and that of the 30-year old woman and lays bare the connections between the mother and daughter as well as the men in their lives. The pacing is fast, the construction tight and the story moves along well, revealing just enough of the details to hold my interest and make me keep reading. Reommended.
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Summary: Girl Talk is a great escape
Review: I loved Girl Talk. Julianna Baggott's sense of humor is just great. The winding path that this book took me on was a hilarious escape from reality. I savored my reading time, never wanting the story to end. The characters were fun, interesting, weird, goofy and easy to identify with. The plot is just twisted enough to be fiction, yet so convincing it feels like real life. Baggott has done a great job on this first book. I can't wait to read more of her work.
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Summary: A Beautiful Book
Review: Julianna Baggott has written a beautiful book. One of the things that I admire most about it is that the characters are not only well-realized but she clearly loves them all and allows her readers to love them, not in spite of, but because of their flaws and imperfections. The settings in which we find the characters are imagined in precise and vivid detail. I remembered, for the first time in years, the clothes I'd worn and seen in the seventies and early eighties, but more than that, I remembered what it felt like to grow up then. The stories that these characters carry around and their delicate and careful unfolding make the book a pleasure to read and made me genuinely sorry that it was over. I will not forget this book for a long, long time.
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