Customer Reviews

Carousel of Progress: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book covers ground you may recognize: teenage girl, living in Southern California, facing divorce and dysfunction. But it would be a real shame for it to get lost in the crowd, because Tanney crafts her narrator's voice so sharply that you cannot help but hang on her every word. Meredith Herman is fourteen, struggling to deal with a moody mother, a father who is a child himself, as well as finding her own way in a city and world where everything makes you have to grow up fast. Tanney's writing is fluid, funny, and at times heartbreakingly poignant. The only downside to this book is its title, which makes it sound like a textbook instead of the great read it is. Well worth the money and time.

I'm always looking for a hip, current, female coming-of-age narrative to complement "Catcher in the Rye" in some of my classes. The most impressive story I've come across so far--Deborah Eisenberg's "What It Was Like, Seeing Chris"--is a bit sophisticated and elusive for younger readers to handle on their own. But "Carousel" is accessible as well as rewarding at the level of descriptive and metaphoric language (the carousel of the title, which refers to the old Disneyland ride, also symbolizes the narrator's leaving behind childish ways and even resonates with the carousel near the end of Holden's quest).

Initially I gave the novel 4 stars. Impressive as it is, it's no match for a dazzling debut such as Donna Tartt's "The Secret History." But when I look at the lists of current best-sellers, when I read nothing but pages and pages of plodding plot summary from college-age students, and when I see a literary landscape increasingly cluttered with "fantasy" fiction, it's easy to develop a fuller appreciation for a literary talent like Tennant's.

This is "authentic" imaginative literature. It's less about "captivating" (i.e. capturing) the reader's imagination than educating, or liberating, it. The author's narrative style leaves room for genuine "interpretation," for "making" as well as "receiving" meaning from the evocative patterns of imagery. Readers of "Carousel of Progress" are, like the novel's protagonist, challenged to abandon infantile carousels and cultivate, rather than surrender, their imaginations.

For the attentive, creative reader the novel holds many rewards--the love/hate relationship between mother and daughter, the portrayal of a double rite-of-passage (mother's as well as daughter's), the touching brother-sister bond, and the tensions between the teen-age Meredith who is the subject of the narration and the considerably older Meredith who tells the story.

Admittedly, the narration occasionally takes on a one-sided quality. More often than not, it is Meredith who plays parent to her childish, self-absorbed parents. And her account contains no small amount of male bashing, with Meredith's father being the first of a succession of male figures distinguished by their immaturity, egocentricity and flagrant disregard for the sensitive female protagonist. As a result, the climactic moment at which Meredith tells us she loves her father seemed "forced" to this reader--perhaps more reflective of the mature narrator than the 16-year-old who is the subject of her story.

These minor reservations aside, "Carousel of Progress" is a promising debut and an engaging work of literature. Like Holden, Meredith has a real nose for what's phony as well as a creative capacity for fabricating various roles in her search for identity and belonging. The novel is full of Meredith's humorous snapshots of friends and family as well as explicit sexual description that reflects the importance of these matters in young people's lives without gratuitous exploiting of the subject (in fact, I'd welcome the opportunity to defend the novel's treatment of sex before some PTA group). For the present, at least, I'm quite satisfied to be a matchmaker for the always stimulating Holden.

Meredith Herman is coming of age in the seventies. All the signs are there: Lying in the sun to get a tan. Drinking Tab soda. Frosted hair. Watching Fantasy Island on TV when it wasn't reruns! Her mother is seeing a therapist, and begins to challenge her traditional role in the household--that of caretaker and martyr. Divorce is uncommon, and the sexual revolution is just getting out of the starting blocks as Meredith becomes aware of human relationships (including her parents' disintegrating marriage), real boys, and the possibilities of sex and love. An especially telling and poignant moment unfolds when Mrs. Herman responds to her daughter, "'Mom'...is that all I am to you?" In that question, you know her sense of entrapment and isolated anguish... and the inadequacy of a 14-year-old's ability to come up with an answer!
Along with every teen who grew up in 1970s America, Meredith struggles constantly to become cool, and despairs of ever being beautiful or popular or even well-dressed. You love her courage and persistence as she renegotiates a relationship with her departing father, who has a horror of direct confrontation and tries to charm and joke everything into place instead; her younger brother, who is touching and sweet but also the annoying terror many of us recall from our childhoods; and not least of all, her mother, who in her mid-thirties rite of passage is evolving perhaps as quickly and as totally as Meredith herself.
The feel of this book reminded me of Judy Blume's "Wifey," a book that many teens growing up in the seventies read in secret when their mothers weren't at home. You get a confidential look into a REAL (istic) teen's everyday thoughts and life events. I was absorbed in it from start to finish and will buy an extra copy to loan to friends-- it was that good!

I was attracted to this book by its cover and I was pleased at what this book had to offer. I was in the mood for a shallow book, and this fit the bill. Overall comedic and entertaining, but much more than that as the story progresses. You fall deeper into the characters, and realize that though your parents may have not went through a divorce, you can relate to Meredith (main character) on a personal level. Read it when you are in for humor, cynism and slight flash back to your teen years.

I couldn't put this book down, because the story was so compelling. Meredith was believable. I loved how Tanney portrayed her affection for her brother and her relationships with everyone.

But I do have a question...any idea why Kim's pregnancy wasn't addressed head on? And I didn't understand why Tanney wrote in a scene where Leo tells Meredith she will be better off without Kim, and then dances around Kim's pregnancy and maybe Meredith's feelings for Kim... Anyone have any thoughts on that?

It's like reading the diary of a bright, funny, utterly candid teenager over several years of her family's breakup as she tests forbidden waters and plunges into young womanhood. Tanney has a sharp sense of time, place, and pace. The dialogue jumps out at you it's so real. You just want to step into this book and give that tough, sassy, sensitive girl a hug to keep her going. But she does it without you.

I loved this novel. I thought the character of Meredith was amazingly real, even within the first chapter. I loved the balance of cynicism and confidence. Really great and relatable faux memoir.

I was also intrigued by the story and the cover of the book, and I was immersed from the time I picked it up and started reading. What I especially liked about the novel was how it spanned several years and truly showed Meredith's growth and the changing ways she viewed her parents. I thought the depiction of her mother and father was classic and right on. Katherine Tanney didn't try to sugarcoat or mask the inner workings of a not-so-perfect family, creating such realistic characters that I cringed at some of the dialogue and scenes because I felt how painful Meredith's life was. I definitely recommend this book.

A Carousel of Progress is an intense journey, albeit laced with some humor, which is seen through the eyes of a fourteen year old. For those who can relate to growing up in the seventies, this book provides an interesting look back at the historic relevance of Meredith's emotional journey. Women's roles, at that time, are changing while the protagonist is trying to define who she really is and where she is going. Her mother and step-mother are poor role models. Caught in a turbulent divorce, her sense of self becomes disjointed. Although the book is interesting, I found myself lost in the characters anger and constant bickering. I wanted more; the characters needed more dimension. I enjoyed going back to the early, chaotic days of teenage years in the seventies, but I completed the book wanting more substance!

My wife suggested I read this book and on the grounds that the novel based on the musings of an LA teenager I was somewhat dubious. I am an english male in my 40's. I was wrong. This book is a joy. The characterisations are really superb and the book is as a result totally believable as well as being funny and touching.

Katherine Tanney is a real talent