Leaving Eden

Rating:
Summary: My new favorite author!
Review: I read LEAVING EDEN first and was so thrilled with the book and the author's style that I immediately ordered everything she has written. Her mysteries (SIDESHOW and GRACE POINT are wonderfully structured, as well.) I'm now reading THE LAW OF BOUND HEARTS and will be sad when I run out of books! I look forward to many years of enjoyment and I've recommended her to all my friends.
Best wishes always.
Barbara Kantzabedian

Rating:
Summary: A book of dreams just for you.
Review: Leaving Eden by Anne D. LeClaire

In this warm hearted coming of age story, twelve year old Tallie Brooks is missing her mother one summer. Though her mother has gone away before, in Tallie's heart, she knows it will be a long time this time before her mother's return, if at all. Her father works long hours at the mill, leaving Tallie alone in the house most days, and even for longer periods of time of times when he stops at CC's Bar after work, which is most evenings. Tallie works at the Klip 'N Kurl, with a boss who claims she can "read" soap bubbles like others read tea leave. Tallie sweeps the floors, folds the towels and helps in general. Tallie amuses herself by keeping a book of all the things she has learned at the Klip 'N Kurl, small lessons she savors that become bites of wisdom for us readers. Since Tallie's boss hosts "Glamour Day" one day, Tallie dreams the same dream her own mother die - to become a movie star, and this one "Glamour Day will be her big chance. When Tallie chases her own dream, she learns that it is in her very own little book that her dream has waited all along. A must read.

Rating:
Summary: Leaving Eden
Review: Leaving Eden is a cute & charming coming of age story about Tallie Brock, daughter of a Natalie Wood look-a-like. During this summer in Eden, Virginia Tallie's mother returns from a stint in LA, looking for stardom, and Tallie is keeping her fingers crossed that her mom is now home for good. Alternating between the present, to past flashbacks, LeClaire begins painting a picture of Tallie's life, as she goes through the joys and pitfalls of being a teenage girl. To make extra cash, Tallie is employed at the local salon, the Klip & Kurl where the buzz of the local community women keep her in the know of all the lastest goings on. The highlight of her summer and quest for her summer savings is getting a Glamour photo makeover-Tallie and the salon women can't wait to transform themselves. As we discover, deep in the hearts of these different women, is the common bond to look and feel as glamorous as a celebrity.

Tallie's journey includes feelings of isolation as an outsider from the "popular" group, finding true love, and uncovering some painful and surprising secrets. LeClaire's writing and story are both humorous and touching.

Rating:
Summary: Leaving Eden
Review: Leaving Eden is a cute & charming coming of age story about Tallie Brock, daughter of a Natalie Wood look-a-like. During this summer in Eden, Virginia Tallie's mother returns from a stint in LA, looking for stardom, and Tallie is keeping her fingers crossed that her mom is now home for good. Alternating between the present, to past flashbacks, LeClaire begins painting a picture of Tallie's life, as she goes through the joys and pitfalls of being a teenage girl. To make extra cash, Tallie is employed at the local salon, the Klip & Kurl where the buzz of the local community women keep her in the know of all the lastest goings on. The highlight of her summer and quest for her summer savings is getting a Glamour photo makeover-Tallie and the salon women can't wait to transform themselves. As we discover, deep in the hearts of these different women, is the common bond to look and feel as glamorous as a celebrity.

Tallie's journey includes feelings of isolation as an outsider from the "popular" group, finding true love, and uncovering some painful and surprising secrets. LeClaire's writing and story are both humorous and touching.

Rating:
Summary: Glimpses
Review: Leclaire's coming of age narrative, "Leaving Eden" is more about growing up and finding out that your dreams of leaving lead you instead back home. Tallie Brock struggles with growing up without her mother's counsel, never noticing how many people care about her. While following a dream she thought was her own, Tallie uncovers secrets that lead to her own growth, to an understanding about family love and loyality and in the end, the path to her place in this world. Leclaire's insight into the emotions of growing up will put "Leaving Eden" on the best seller list.
Beverly J Scott author of RIGHTEOUS REVENGE...

Rating:
Summary: Glimpses
Review: Leclaire's coming of age narrative, "Leaving Eden" is more about growing up and finding out that your dreams of leaving lead you instead back home. Tallie Brock struggles with growing up without her mother's counsel, never noticing how many people care about her. While following a dream she thought was her own, Tallie uncovers secrets that lead to her own growth, to an understanding about family love and loyality and in the end, the path to her place in this world. Leclaire's insight into the emotions of growing up will put "Leaving Eden" on the best seller list.
Beverly J Scott author of RIGHTEOUS REVENGE...


Rating:
Summary: People Are Full Of Surprises
Review: Tallie Brock is the kind of character you don't forget. Sixteen, hardworking, and alert to the wisdom of the women around her, Tallie has an interior life that stands in sharp relief to the hot, dusty Eden roads she bikes, the trailer home she keeps clean, and the Klip'N'Kurl where she sweeps up hair. Though the novel is set in 1992, flashbacks to events in 1988 provide insight into Tallie's drive to escape Eden and discover her mother's secrets.

Anne D. Leclaire writes beautifully, capturing both Tallie's naivety and her resolve. At the end of each chapter is a page from Tallie's Book, a notebook with bits of advice in it like: people are full of surprises, and women with fat faces shouldn't wear bangs. Though the idiomatic language provides some humor, parts of the story are sad, and quite painful to read. Leclaire creates other unforgettable women in this book: Martha Lee, Mama's best friend whose face is ugly enough to stop a truck; Raylene, who teaches Tallie about generosity of spirit; Lenora, who can read the future in your shampoo suds. The men in this book are not as memorable. There's the quietly drunken father, the popular guy Tallie likes, and the not-so-popular guy who likes her. Though they are needed for plot, the men here fade next to the vivid world of the town's women. The only other flaw in the book is that the ending is not very well grounded in the rest of the story. Leclaire's prose is strong enough that she can still carry it off.

As the story progresses, items in the notebook change gradually from other people's truisms to Tallie's own truths ("It is a mighty and terrible possibility that a person can do great harm without the least intention"). How she comes to learn these truths makes an absorbing story. A good read, but keep the tissues handy.

Rating:
Summary: People Are Full Of Surprises
Review: Tallie Brock is the kind of character you don't forget. Sixteen, hardworking, and alert to the wisdom of the women around her, Tallie has an interior life that stands in sharp relief to the hot, dusty Eden roads she bikes, the trailer home she keeps clean, and the Klip'N'Kurl where she sweeps up hair. Though the novel is set in 1992, flashbacks to events in 1988 provide insight into Tallie's drive to escape Eden and discover her mother's secrets.

Anne D. Leclaire writes beautifully, capturing both Tallie's naivety and her resolve. At the end of each chapter is a page from Tallie's Book, a notebook with bits of advice in it like: people are full of surprises, and women with fat faces shouldn't wear bangs. Though the idiomatic language provides some humor, parts of the story are sad, and quite painful to read. Leclaire creates other unforgettable women in this book: Martha Lee, Mama's best friend whose face is ugly enough to stop a truck; Raylene, who teaches Tallie about generosity of spirit; Lenora, who can read the future in your shampoo suds. The men in this book are not as memorable. There's the quietly drunken father, the popular guy Tallie likes, and the not-so-popular guy who likes her. Though they are needed for plot, the men here fade next to the vivid world of the town's women. The only other flaw in the book is that the ending is not very well grounded in the rest of the story. Leclaire's prose is strong enough that she can still carry it off.

As the story progresses, items in the notebook change gradually from other people's truisms to Tallie's own truths ("It is a mighty and terrible possibility that a person can do great harm without the least intention"). How she comes to learn these truths makes an absorbing story. A good read, but keep the tissues handy.

Rating:
Summary: laugh out loud funny
Review: This book is so funny, it is laugh out loud funny. Do not miss this book. It reminds me of Fannie Flagg. Good story line, good characters, a perfect book.

Rating:
Summary: Trite and Mediocre
Review: What does it mean to make wise choices in life? How is it possible for a sensitive teen-ager to comprehend the significance of a mother's love when its source is no longer present? How much should one risk for dreams, desires and hopes? What is it about wanting that makes it so consuming, so overpowering? Anne LeClaire's sensitive, lyrical and evocative coming-of-age novel, "Leaving Eden," provides stunning, instructive answers. Her protagonist, sixteen year-old Tallie Brock does not consider her hometown of suggestively-named Eden, Virginia to be paradise; nor does she realize that the knowledge she so earnestly seeks about life could compel her to an act of self-banishment.

What Talie does know is heartbreak and abandonment. Not once, but twice, does her mother leave her. Blessed with Natalie Wood-like looks, Dinah Mae Brock wrestles with her own need to live out her dreams. After Dinah Mae abruptly leaves her diligent, devoted husband Luddy for the hopes of realizing her life-long ambition of becoming a Hollywood stgar, her bright, inquisitive but disaffected daughter must confront her own demons and ask herself questions she is not initially prepared to confront.

Without the comfort and security of her mother, Tallie lacks "context" for her life and yearns to see the "whole picture" instead of the "jangly bits and pieces that didn't seem to fit." Insecure with her own physical appearance, a social outsider whose anxieties are exacerbated by an intolerably smug and critical maternal grandmother, Tallie has yet to discover that "things don't always have to be laid out straight as string to make sense." Trying to make sense of his own loneliness, Luddy takes to drink to obliterate pain. One parent dead, the other remote and silent, Tallie seeks answers through involvement in the Klip-N-Kurl beauty salon, where the town's women congregate to share gossip, secrets, and occasional comfort.

Just as quickly as she had left Eden, Dinah Mae returns, but with even more unanswered questions. The novel pivots around the issue of unresolved dreams and wants. Both mother and daughter must face how to fulfill the lives they have been given while being true to themselves and the one they love. In desperation, Tallie turns to the town's pariah "witch," whose Queen of Cures causes more consternation to Tallie than comfort. Tallie muses, "It's hard to figure out what will kill you and what will cure you" and even more difficuilt to figure out the difference, she unknowingly sets an outline for her own life.

The second abandonment is even more wrenching, more final as Tallie must observe her mother's unsuccessful battle with cancer. LeClaire is nothing less than brilliant in her exploration of an adolescent's existential anguish and resounding pain at the loss of a beloved parent. Tallie yearns to have her mother tell her "everything" she needs to know about life. As she rails at the unfairness of her mother's death, Tallie also castigates herself for her own inability to ask the right questions, provide enough solace and deflect physical pain.

As Tallie discovers "wanting is a powerful thing," she embarks on a bumpy road of self-discovery in which her sexuality, capacity for truth and ability to deceive combine to compel her to an act of self-defintion and discovery. She learns that dreams, "the conceiving of possibilities that stretch" beyond the single person, necessarily must animate life; the act of want transcends its attainment. Tallie ultimately will come to grips with one of life's greatest dilemmas, a choice between regret and remorse.

Interspersed in this fast-paced narrative are bite-sized morsels of Tallie's wisdom, written in her private journal. Each aphorism derives from experience and love, from the intricate web of friendships Tallie has created in Eden and from the solitude of suffering and desire in her own heart. Anne LeClaire has created a genuinely moving description of wisdom's costs and love's possibilities. "Leaving Eden" will leave readers profoundly moved.