V's Pick #46: Local Girls by Alice Hoffman

The picture I found says "Stories" on the cover, but the copy I read did not. I'll add that to the list of mysteries about this book I've still yet to figure out.

Part Intervention-esque drug tale, part cancer chronicle and part coming-of-age story, this book is at once incredibly exciting and extremely boring. Told in summers, expect for one chapter of Winter, there is a constant balance between life and death; of spirit, of self, of family, of dreams. Despite the lurid subject matter covered in the telling of Gretel's life, Hoffman's writing is slow and dreamy, lending a weird - and I'm not sure if purposeful - juxtapostion that sort of wore me out and made me crazy at the same time.
 
I started this book while in Wisconsin at the end of summer. The town Gretel grows up in during Local Girls is oddly like Fond du Lac, WI where my mom grew up; the connections made me keep reading even when boredom kicked in. From the descriptions of the streets to the way the locals passed their time, the small town fever and the dashed dreams of brilliance by way of teenage pregnancy felt like an extension of the trip down my mom's memory lane. However, set in a time period that could have easily been the 50s or the 10s, it was hard to locate a TRUE sense of place in this novel, which might have partly lead to my transfer of my own setting into the story. Despite Hoffman's vivid details and clean storytelling, I also found it difficult to connect to the characters, especially Gretel, who seemed at once a blank slate and the oldest soul in the novel.

Maybe that was the point - a story to tell for telling sake - about a girl who could be anyone, in a town that could be any small town, in a time that could be any time? I don't know. It's a short novel, otherwise I'm honestly not sure I'd have made it through. I'd only packed two books and had blown through the first before we'd landed so it was either read this or pick up my mom's latest Debbie Macomber. This was indeed the better choice; finishing it off back home, I found the good things outweighed the bad: friendship, roses, death, drugs, small towns, hot summers, brothers, catnip, avacado and swimming in wool dresses. And, I must admit that in hindsight, it's entirely possible that the slowness of this book was wholly stylistic, after all...it's a story about life, fettered.