sonia_reppe's reviews
1293 reviews

This doesn't get much better than the first sentence: "Hats, like first husbands in my experience, are usually a mistake." Doesn't she (Ganek) steal that line from a Meg Ryan movie?
The title is misleading. It's not about the summer she and her helf-sister read Gatsy, it only flashes back to that for 8 seconds total.

All the characters are caricatures; the leading man is so devoted to the protagonist, Cassie-Stella (just pick one name, please), and it was very predictable. This is an OK 2 starred book because Bigsy was kind of interesting. But the tie-in to Gatsby was weak.

My favorite stories were Snakes and Harvest. The writing is really good but the tone is a little too cynical for me. You might argue that Evans is just being realistic, and I like realism, don't I? Yes, and I don't shy away from realism that makes you squirm a little when you see your own shortcomings, mistakes and/or misbehavior mirrored by the characters. But with realism you could take your characters down the redemptful (redemptive?) road or leave them in a state of hopelessness which I think this collection tends toward. Aside from the futilitarian tone, I liked seeing her characters get in some messy situations because she knows how to write them and drive them to do things. Some of the stories weren't resolved, like at the end of virgins I wanted to know if Jasmine—the friend who went home with four strange men—would be ok.

I learned that I don't care about the art-buying business. I also don't care about the main character of this story, Lacey. I didn't like her, she was cold. I was disappointed because this book was written in a different style from Shopgirl, which I loved, but I wanted to give it a chance. I really wanted to like Lacey; but it just kept getting worse.

This story is told from the point of view of Lacey's friend, an art critic guy, so there was some art criticism along with pictures of paintings and "art" dispersed through-out the book. This narrator also detailed the art auction business at Christie's and Sotheby's. All of this did nothing for me. By the end I wanted to see Lacey go down; which I guess she did, but the narrator just tells us about it as an end note.

Awesome...Probably my favorite book of 2011, so far. So many great lines. I don't want to give anything away, but look for the theme of carrots running through the story. I started laughing every time the word carrot appeared (read this novel and you'll know why). Espach takes some risks with this story and I think it all worked in a good way. You'll like this book if you like coming-of-age and quality writing.

I love the time period here--the first half of the 1990's: Kurt Cobain, Nirvana; Stone Temple Pilots; me a grundge high-schooler at the time, everything still had a feeling of newness about it, and the world was my playground. Actually the world sometimes seemed to be a scary place, but nothing bad could possibly happen to me, other than bad hair days and pimples, right?

Contrarily, Randi Black's novel, Miss World, is about a Californian high-schooler in the '90's who is dealing with some heavy issues, and bad things do happen to her. Carefree days of keds and pony-tails this novel is not. Actually it's pretty profane. The main themes in this book are sex, oppression (mainly the parental kind), and rebellion. Rebellion big time.

The novel has a good pace; the writing is good overall. The imaginary friend/alter ego that Kim, the protagonist, conjures up works well. His snappy, sarcastic dialogue is the best in the novel.

Kim's harsh treatment by her aunt and mother, who is oppressive and seemingly unloving, cause Kim to seek out love wherever she can find it. Supposedly, things get better for Kim when she starts dating a dyslexic boy from school, but the relationship just comes across as sexual and a temporary ego-boost for Kim. I understand that Kim was trying to compensate for feeling violated by that creepy older guy she hooked up with, but when the boyfriend gets possessive and obsessed with the idea of killing the creepy guy, this relationship does not seem to be helping Kim in any way. I would've rather seem Kim forgive herself and find her way to happiness. Instead, she kept acting out in anger. When she meets creepy guy again, she partly stands up for herself, but it's an ugly scene. Why did we (the readers) even have to see him again? I don't know. Some would say the problem with this book is it's a lot of sex without enough else to balance it out.

One part that worked is Kim's confrontation with her aunt and mother at the end, and finding out some family history which revealed their hypocrisy, and showed her that their criticism at her may stem from something else entirely.

Don't read this book if you don't like profanity. An independent press, Fire Spirit claims to print "bad books for bad girls." I guess that about sums it up.

(Review originally printed at Bookpleasures.com)
For Georgia Durante, a Rochester-based model in the 60’s, the world was “mysterious, exciting, and seductive.” She had an “endless appetite for excitement” and she attracted dangerous men. This led to her having several ties to the Mob and more than one bad relationship, which you can read about in her confessional memoir, The Company She Keeps.

She started running errands for the Mob as a young mother, leaving her baby daughter with her mother. “I was taken in by the intrigue…without much thought of consequence.” After one close call fleeing from a robbery (Georgia at the wheel) she had second thoughts while she accepted her cut of the money, but says she was “hooked on the adrenaline rush.” She seems so tough and worldly it is easy to forget that she was just a girl. Some readers might harshly judge her lifestyle; some might say she had it coming when her second husband—who also had ties to the Mob—quickly becomes an abusive, controlling force in her life, cutting her off from friends and family; but that attitude of “those women deserve it” is exactly the attitude that Georgia decries while opining on society’s oppressive view of women; which she had to deal with at any early age when she was violently raped by her sister’s husband.
This was just the beginning of the reoccurring violence that surrounded her young adult life. Besides witnessing violence in the Mafia and her tumultuous second marriage, her first husband’s brother kills his entire family, and later on an obsessive stalker holds a gun to her head. How does she deal with the violent tendencies of men around her? She says a dark shadow emerged through her pain. As an interesting device, she calls this hard-hearted, desensitized side “Georgia Black” a counter-point and protector to her vulnerable, soft-hearted side, “Georgia White.” Through-out the book, “Black” and “White” take turns emerging in different situations.

This memoir doesn’t fall easily into any category. Coming-of-age at the beginning, turning into survivor memoir mixed with true crime. Georgia shares some insights into the psyche of a domestic abuse victim; when writing about overcoming victim mentality and finding her inner-strength she is at her most introspective. Interestingly, after getting out of her second marriage, she calls her estranged husband (the abuser) to help her out of yet another violent relationship. He sends a guy to “take care of it.” Is this bizarrely sweet? Georgia makes it seem like it’s just another day in her crazy life.
Generally speaking, the second half is depressing as we see Georgia’s personal life fall into shambles but it’s during this time that she pursues a new career in L.A. as a stunt driver and gains confidence in herself.

I called this a “confessional” but sometimes it seems as if Georgia is only partially revealing the truth. Understandably, not too much is revealed about the Mafia or the errands she runs. At some points, she interrupts her personal commentary to give an editorial about the latest Mafia news of that time, but we don’t understand how much she has to do with these situations, and when she says her life revolved around her six-year-old and her new career, the FBI present themselves (for the second time) and it’s revealed that she’s been hanging out with John Gotti and Salvatore Reale. Drug usage is down-played and hinted at defensively; it is things like this, like the casual unremorseful mention of throwing an ashtray at her sister which caused fourteen stitches, which causes the reader to go “whoa—what is really going on here?” In the last chapter, she talks of soul-searching, needing to do inner-work to let light back into her spirit and become whole, but these just seem like superficial phrases.

There is one steady presence that gives the book a romantic quality: that of Frankie, a mobster she met in NYC the summer after high school graduation. He loved her but didn’t want her involved in his kind of life; little did he know she was destined for it anyway when he refused to marry her. They kept up a relationship all through Georgia’s life so far.
This book was originally published in 1998. As a re-release, this mass-market paperback edition includes an epilogue which shows real redemption and genuine soul-searching. Georgia is now involved in leading an abused-women organization and using her adventurous spirit to help people in crisis. I am looking forward to her next memoir.

I really wanted to see that jerk Hayden get it in the end, and I know it was implied when the Russian Mob was standing outside his hotel room door, but I wanted to see it, to make sure he died.