Amazon.com Review
There are books that never seem to belong entirely to children, but they're not strictly grown-up novels either. Philip Pullman's fantasy novels fall into this category, as does Francesca Lia Block's nutty Weetzie Bat series. For those who love books that can be witty, knowing, and innocent all at once, Diane Leslie has created young Fleur de Leigh. We met her first in
Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime, and now she's gotten herself a sequel,
Fleur de Leigh in Exile. A 1950s Hollywood brat with an over-the-top radio star mom, Fleur de Leigh is a narrator of deadpan formality and quicksilver goofiness. In
Fleur de Leigh in Exile, she's landed in, really, the ultimate exile: Tuscon. No sooner does she arrive at the Rancho Cambridge West boarding school school than she encounters her former best friend, Daisy, who now goes by Twyla. In proper Boarding School Fiction fashion, the novel is deeply episodic, with pranks galore, adventure-filled forays into the real world, and of course some lessons learned. All through this slightly shambling and messy plot, Fleur de Leigh observes the world around her with her customary aplomb. Of one of her teachers: "His chin seemed to form its own hairless goatee." These novels are all about an eccentric, smart young girl's voice, and Leslie maintains it seamlessly.
--Claire Dederer
From Publishers Weekly
Spunky Fleur de Leigh, star of Leslie's Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime, narrates the next installment of her eventful life as the child of Hollywood has-beens in the early 1960s. Fleur is the often neglected but irrepressible daughter of Charmian, erstwhile star of The Charmian Leigh Radio Mystery Half Hour, and Maurice, a producer single-mindedly determined to relaunch his wife's career. The teenager is sent to boarding school, where she hopes to fulfill the "all-embracing desire that I'd nurtured for most of my 15 years: to live with normal, amicable people from America's heartland." Alas, the word normal doesn't exactly apply at Rancho Cambridge West, a Tucson school attended by 40 oddball students and staff. Mr. Prail, the preternaturally tall headmaster who resembles Abe Lincoln, dreams of-what else?-appearing in the movies as Abe Lincoln. The ineffectual study hall monitor, Mr. St. Cyr, stumbles through his duties in an alcoholic haze, while all the students besides Fleur suffer from health problems that Arizona's arid climate is supposed to cure. Fleur cheers up when she's joined at the school by her glamorous and delinquent best friend Daisy, fresh from a spell at Swiss boarding school and calling herself Twyla Flint. Fleur also makes friends with Melly, the daughter of garment workers from Newark, N.J., and suffers a series of misadventures, including the discovery that the student body is anti-Semitic and the "rescue" of a migrant worker's TB-infected baby, as well as her first amorous encounter. Leslie offers a fresh take on class prejudice and a likable, often funny heroine, though fans of her first book will miss seeing more of Fleur's comically pompous parents.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
