A duo of amazing novels. That’s what I call these two novels by Canadian women, about women, and… well you get the picture.
One Good Hustle by Billie Livingston
Sammie Bell. 16. The daughter of two con artists. Essentially abandoned by her alcoholic mother and hustler father. Sammie wants an ordinary life, but doesn’t know if she can fight her genetic predisposition to be ‘in the game’. Living in Burnaby, B.C, with her mother, Marlene, who goes off the deep end following a scam gone bad, Sammie seeks haven and stability at her friend Jill’s home. There, she gets a taste of what a real home is like with Jill’s parents Lou and Ruby. But, she still craves the love and attention of her parents, and essentially sits by the phone waiting for her father, Sam to call from Toronto, to tell Sammie he’s coming to rescue her and Marlene from their Welfare existence.
Sammie is confused. She loves her mother, she hates her mother. She goes to visit her, but doesn’t go in. She likes a boy, she pushes him away. Jill is her best friend yet at times she disgusts Sammie. She wants a job, she wants it all to come easy. Living a straight life is hard for this girl who was brought up in the life since before she knew it.
I wasn’t sure if One Good Hustle was for me. At first, I thought it was a Young Adult book and handed it over to my 18-year old daughter to read. But, when she took too long, I retrieved it. And, I was glad. Livingston tells her tale with a poignance and honesty that could only come from her own experiences growing up in Vancouver, BC.
As the novel is set somewhere in the late 70s, it’s supposedly a simpler time. Having the novel set in that time, though, opens up so many more opportities and choices for a young woman to make. After all, it was before helicopter parenting and cell phones. With her disrupted innocence, Sammie reminds me so much of the ’Anonymous’ from my own coming of age novel Go Ask Alice. She’s proof that the optimism of youth is not to be wasted, nor is a child’s love easily displaced. This novel is a must read from a fantastic writer.
Unputdownable Factor: 10/10
Recommend Factor: 10/10
The Blondes by Emily Schultz
This book was a big surprise. For some reason, when I read the jacket, I thought it was a light and fluffy piece of chick lit. But, instead what I got was a meaty, yet skillfully wrought, social commentary on women’s relationships and how we can abandon our sisterhood so easily. In fact, the novel was so smart that it’s a struggle to summarize without spoiling the story. But, I’ll do my best.
Women have stupid dreams.
As an opening line, that is a winner. Uttered by our narrator, Hazel Hayes, abandoned in a cottage and heavily pregnant. It’s winter. The world has been infected by a strange virus and mass hysteria. Hazel begins talking to her unborn child, sharing her story, meandering forward and backward , slipping nuggets of information to both her unborn baby and us, the reader sparingly, and yes, teasingly.
We learn that the world has been taken over by an apocalyptic type disease that affects only women who either have blonde hair or who have dyed their hair blonde. Hazel, a graduate student whose studies coincidentally focuses on aesthetology, more specifically ‘How women look and what they think they look like’, is in New York City escaping her life when the first cases of The Blonde Fury happen. She becomes stranded when countries institute martial law. Right after finding out she is pregnant. She makes every attempt to return to her family in Canada, and to tell the father of her unborn child that she is expecting. Throughout her journey, Hazel witnesses, and shares with us, what the strain of danger and fear will do to people, how easy it is to fall into the trap of mass hysteria, and how women’s loyalties to each other are easily disrupted by self-interest. other.
I am in awe of Emily Schultz. This success of this story comes only because of her skillful manipulation of past and present, truths and fiction. Her prose is spare, enough, although sometimes frustratingly not enough. But, in a good way. The Blondes made me smarter.
Unputdownable Factor: 10/10
Recommend Factor: 10/10
I was provided these books for review from Random House Canada. the opinions, however incredibly positive, are my own. I swear.
