by Cathryn_Conroy: This is a fever dream of a novel, and I say that with the highest praise. Just sit back and enjoy the charming and eccentric ride.
Written by Amy Bloom, this is the story of Eva. She lives with her single mother, Hazel, and enjoys weekend visits to their home by her father Edgar, who is married to another woman with a daughter named Iris, who is three years older than Eva. It’s 1939 when Iris’s mother dies and Hazel hightails it to their house in Ohio and sneakily leaves Eva there with a single suitcase and no forwarding address.
Here are the first two sentences of this book that I think are so perfect no one could possibly put the book down after reading them: “My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.”
Edgar, who is a bit of a grifter but has a big heart, welcomes his love child—as confusing as this is at first for Iris, who had no idea of Eva’s existence until now. The half-sisters quickly become best friends, and their bizarre life together replete with astounding adventures that take them from small town Ohio to Hollywood and then to New York City and beyond is what makes up the heart and soul of this imaginative novel. While the plot is quite compelling, the novel is primarily character-driven in a most entrancing way with distinctive and delightful people who populate the girls’ lives. Iris is the ambitious star (or she wants to be), and Eva is her sidekick, always there to pick up the pieces when they need to move on. Iris is beautiful, while Eva is brilliant. Still, they do what they have to do to survive even if it’s lying and cheating, but they do it in a way that makes the reader cheer them on. After all, they are Edgar’s daughters.
This is a book that made me laugh and made me tear up. And I never knew what would happen next. Filled with good plot and character development surprises, this is an astonishing novel. All the pieces and parts, some of which seem a bit disconnected from others, come delightfully together in the end. May we all be so lucky in life—even when bad luck prevails.
Bonus: Each chapter title is the name of a swing, jazz, pop, or country-western song that was popular in the 1930s and 1940s, which Amy Bloom chose to set the scene of the times.
