Cindy Harrison loves books. As a review for Publishers Weekly, she read about 20 books per month, and still finds time to teach at her local community college."I am also deeply loyal to writers whose work changed my life in significant ways, even if I have not read them in ages. Plus, all kinds of books have marked meaningful moments in my life." Visit her at
Cynthiaharrison.com or email her
Cindy@CynthiaHarrison
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G
ayle Brandeis is a new-to-me writer, but her story, and the ironic lyricism with which she tells it, won me over immediately. Flannery Parker, the quirky, charmingly clueless main character, is married with two toddlers and a husband who is almost as immature as the kids. He's in school, working on his mass media dissertation by napping in between marathon bouts of watching seven televisions simultaneously.
Not a whole lot of dissertation-writing, baby-watching, or attention to Flan is happening, but she puts up with it, because it's her turn to go to college next. Meanwhile, she draws inspiration from Walt Whitman, sells storage locker contents on eBay, and joins her neighbors for pot-luck dinners outdoors in the blistering heat of Riverside, California. When her Afghani neighbors become ethnic targets,
Flan, despite increasingly repressive government actions, involves herself with a woman in a burka, an artist with blue hair, and a very old editon of
Leaves of Grass.
Brandeis handles these elements--contemporary politics, cultural snobbism and its opposite, a falling-apart marriage--with wit and candor. My kids are grown ups now, but for the length of this novel, I leapt back into that time when hormones ruled and Big Bird was king. And I loved tagging along with Flan on her adventure toward self-discovery.
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