Girl Talk
[Books]
Review by NATASYA SAUFI HASHIM
Author: Julianna Baggot
Publisher: Arrow
I chose Girl Talk because I assumed it would be a heart-warming, bonding, funny ha-ha book. However, honestly speaking, it is not my kind of book.
My personal choice of reading material is the fills-the-soul-like-a-hot-cup-of-cocoa-on-a-rainy-day kind. Girl Talk was definitely not what I expected. I was anticipating a read that had more of a Divine-Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood feel to it but was sorely disappointed.
Putting my biased opinion aside, I must mention that Amazon.com readers ratings gave her of four stars. It goes to show that one should never take one person’s opinion to heart. Not liking the book however doesn’t mean that it is a pile of literary crap. Far from it. Julianna Bagott is a brilliant writer. She has been able to realistically write a piece of literature that paints a child’s perspective on exploring and understanding the world of her mother. Her characters are so vividly drawn that you can’t help but associate aspects of their personalities with the people around you. The mother/daughter relationships written about in Girl Talk are also psychologically astute, witty but at times very dark and painfully heartbreaking.
I mention relationship in plural because there are two generations of mother-and-daughter here. One is between Lissy and her mother Dotty and the other is of Dotty and her own mum. The story essentially evolves around Lissy Jablonski, a 30-year-old New York advertising executive who is acerbic, intelligent and witty. Lissy, who over the past year has been obsessed with the “possibility of being pregnant”, has found herself really “pregnant” this time by her married ex-lover who she has now no intention of ending up with.
When her first love Church Fiske winds up on her doorstep, she finds herself half wondering half hoping that he will be the one that “saves” her. Instead, within a few days of staying with Lissy, Church ends up falling in love and marrying Lissy’s bitchy, conniving, money-grabbing, Korean-stripper ex-roommate, Kitty Hawk.
This turn of events culminates in Lissy in rehashing her past – to “the summer that never happened”. That summer, Lissy’s father, the soft spoken-gynaecologist, runs off with a redheaded bank teller. Lissy’s mother, Dottie, both hurt and angered by her husband’s betrayal starts confiding in then-15-year-old Lissy. From the midnight “girl talks” they have, Lissy starts uncovering the truth about who she really is.
To escape the feeling of humiliation and having to explain her husband’s disappearance, Dottie takes Lissy away from New Hampshire to take refuge with her rich college friend Juniper Fiske.
There Lissy first meets and falls for the boyishly handsome and impressionable Church. Valium-addicted Juniper is also suffering from her own marital woes and is unable to be of much help.
Once again the Jablonski women are on the move, this time to Dottie’s hometown in Bayonne, New Jersey. They end up staying with Dino and Ruby Pantuliano, an Italian couple who are relations of Lissy’s biological father Anthony Pantuliano.
In Bayonne, Dottie’s past demons begin to haunt her, one demon in particular – her mother. All that Dottie tries to forget and the feelings that she has been trying to suppress for so long resurfaces. She is once again overwhelmed with the feeling of wanting so much to be loved and accepted by her cold and unforgiving, bitter mother. Her mother, who cut all ties with Dottie the minute her kind-loving father passed away, has never attempted to make contact since. This time, with Lissy by her side, Dottie makes her last attempt at gaining her mother’s acceptance.
Lissy turns to the past to make sense of her current state. She believes that the deciding moments of her life have been strongly affected by her family’s past. By getting involved with a married man, she was curiously seeking to understand Vivian, the read-headed bank teller who ran off with her father during the “summer that never happened”.
When she ends up pregnant out of wedlock, she believes that she is assuming the disposition of her mother’s past.
We all may have this common fear of becoming our mothers one day, but this is of course in terms of personality and mannerisms. Lissy on the other hand takes it one step further by repeating the mistakes of her mother. She comes to realise it in the end, when she says: "It's funny how a life suddenly becomes your own."
Review by NATASYA SAUFI HASHIM
Author: Julianna Baggot
Publisher: Arrow
I chose Girl Talk because I assumed it would be a heart-warming, bonding, funny ha-ha book. However, honestly speaking, it is not my kind of book.
My personal choice of reading material is the fills-the-soul-like-a-hot-cup-of-cocoa-on-a-rainy-day kind. Girl Talk was definitely not what I expected. I was anticipating a read that had more of a Divine-Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood feel to it but was sorely disappointed.
Putting my biased opinion aside, I must mention that Amazon.com readers ratings gave her of four stars. It goes to show that one should never take one person’s opinion to heart. Not liking the book however doesn’t mean that it is a pile of literary crap. Far from it. Julianna Bagott is a brilliant writer. She has been able to realistically write a piece of literature that paints a child’s perspective on exploring and understanding the world of her mother. Her characters are so vividly drawn that you can’t help but associate aspects of their personalities with the people around you. The mother/daughter relationships written about in Girl Talk are also psychologically astute, witty but at times very dark and painfully heartbreaking.
I mention relationship in plural because there are two generations of mother-and-daughter here. One is between Lissy and her mother Dotty and the other is of Dotty and her own mum. The story essentially evolves around Lissy Jablonski, a 30-year-old New York advertising executive who is acerbic, intelligent and witty. Lissy, who over the past year has been obsessed with the “possibility of being pregnant”, has found herself really “pregnant” this time by her married ex-lover who she has now no intention of ending up with.
When her first love Church Fiske winds up on her doorstep, she finds herself half wondering half hoping that he will be the one that “saves” her. Instead, within a few days of staying with Lissy, Church ends up falling in love and marrying Lissy’s bitchy, conniving, money-grabbing, Korean-stripper ex-roommate, Kitty Hawk.
This turn of events culminates in Lissy in rehashing her past – to “the summer that never happened”. That summer, Lissy’s father, the soft spoken-gynaecologist, runs off with a redheaded bank teller. Lissy’s mother, Dottie, both hurt and angered by her husband’s betrayal starts confiding in then-15-year-old Lissy. From the midnight “girl talks” they have, Lissy starts uncovering the truth about who she really is.
To escape the feeling of humiliation and having to explain her husband’s disappearance, Dottie takes Lissy away from New Hampshire to take refuge with her rich college friend Juniper Fiske.
There Lissy first meets and falls for the boyishly handsome and impressionable Church. Valium-addicted Juniper is also suffering from her own marital woes and is unable to be of much help.
Once again the Jablonski women are on the move, this time to Dottie’s hometown in Bayonne, New Jersey. They end up staying with Dino and Ruby Pantuliano, an Italian couple who are relations of Lissy’s biological father Anthony Pantuliano.
In Bayonne, Dottie’s past demons begin to haunt her, one demon in particular – her mother. All that Dottie tries to forget and the feelings that she has been trying to suppress for so long resurfaces. She is once again overwhelmed with the feeling of wanting so much to be loved and accepted by her cold and unforgiving, bitter mother. Her mother, who cut all ties with Dottie the minute her kind-loving father passed away, has never attempted to make contact since. This time, with Lissy by her side, Dottie makes her last attempt at gaining her mother’s acceptance.
Lissy turns to the past to make sense of her current state. She believes that the deciding moments of her life have been strongly affected by her family’s past. By getting involved with a married man, she was curiously seeking to understand Vivian, the read-headed bank teller who ran off with her father during the “summer that never happened”.
When she ends up pregnant out of wedlock, she believes that she is assuming the disposition of her mother’s past.
We all may have this common fear of becoming our mothers one day, but this is of course in terms of personality and mannerisms. Lissy on the other hand takes it one step further by repeating the mistakes of her mother. She comes to realise it in the end, when she says: "It's funny how a life suddenly becomes your own."
posted by 9T9 at
3:19 pm
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