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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gambling for Good Mail, September 26, 2007
Evelynn Cole nailed the good mail. She tells of the down and dirty adventures of her protagonist of whom the reader gets to know as well as a good sister or maybe a bad sister. Ms. Cole writes about small and even large as life stuff. Who would conceive of such a big thing as a real cow preserved by taxidermy. She takes us on a trip away from the mundane and far outside the box. A great read for all who dare to go there.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Although she will frustrate you, you will be rooting for Felicia to overcome her problems, which includes an odd addiction, July 2, 2009
This review is from: Gambling for Good Mail (Paperback)
Every person has their addictions and the severity of these addictions forms a continuous flow from the slight to the pathological. Felicia Wood grew up in Connecticut and now makes her home in Southern California; her addiction is pathological and is to receiving interesting mail. To feed her addiction, she purchases an enormous amount of material from mail-order catalogs in the hope that she will win a prize, which is her definition of "good mail." The story opens with Hugo, her fifth husband, packing some suitcases and walking out the door never to return. He has just reached the point where the clutter and the obsession are too much to take.
This embarks Felicia on a journey that involves her past back through her childhood, her relationships with her blood relatives and a smattering of other people she has significant encounters with in her life. This cast of characters is significant in style rather than numbers and includes:
*) The other members of a self-help group.
*) The leader of the self-help group, a doctor who tries to "play doctor" with Felicia.
*) An Italian Count that is down on his financial luck and now fills the role of the prize in a contest for readers of romance novels. Felicia wins a week of romance with the Count and although the relationship is supposed to be platonic, the Count is very much a gigolo.
*) An Asian doctor who helps Caitland, a female relative that comes to live with Felicia and has even more problems than she does. The doctor's reserved style based on Eastern philosophy is exactly what Caitland needs to protect her extremely fragile psyche.
*) Brian, husband number three who makes an unexpected reappearance in her life.
Throughout the book, Felicia battles her memories of her Aunt Renee, the woman of the house where Felicia was raised after her and her brother were orphaned. At times, you grow frustrated with Felicia and her problems, there were many times when I mentally uttered the old phrase, "Get a grip" yet I still rooted for Felicia to emerge from her struggles. When husband number three comes back into her life, you care about Felicia and want her to get back together with him yet want her to stand up for herself and do so only if she can retain her individuality.
Although the original theme is Felicia's addiction, this story is about much more than that, it is a love story with many aspects, a story of abuse and what causes adults to be mean to children in their care and ultimately about forgiveness long after the fact. In one of the most amusing ways to put the bad past truly behind them, Felicia and her brother throw ripe tomatoes at the chair of their Aunt that treated them so poorly. Given the context, it seemed a natural way to finally pick themselves up and truly begin living their lives. This is a good, albeit very quirky and at times very sad book.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Felicia grows up, but not willingly, July 24, 2008
This review is from: Gambling for Good Mail (Paperback)
GAMBLING FOR GOOD MAIL is a compelling story of one woman's search for her true identity and the strength needed to live an authentic life. You could call it a coming-of-age story, but the heroine, Felicia Wood, has long passed the age of reason: she's a ripe 43.
Felicia has had a sad and difficult childhood, to the point where she'll do anything to avoid the possibility of pain. She seems stuck in her self-image as a cheerleader and remains marooned emotionally in her high-school persona when she was cute and loved. She's just a "girl who wants to have fun" and be rewarded with pleasant surprises. A naïve, sexually uninhibited air-head, she trusts that something will turn up to rescue her from her difficulties. She finds lame excuses to avoid introspection, to feel sorrow, to discover why it is that her fourth husband just left her, as did the three before him.
We follow Felicia as she tries to justify her addiction to "good mail": cheap junk from catalogs which have taken over her house and cleaned out her bank account. Faced with the necessity of making it financially on her own, Felicia refuses to return to nursing because it is too depressing when your patients die. She enjoys a stint selling time-shares because it's so jolly when she makes a sale, but she cannot make a living doing it.
Her luck and her life change with the arrival of her niece, Caitland, who pays rent so Felicia, in turn, can pay her mortgage. Caitland has her own deep emotional problems and struggles to hold on to a fragile equilibrium. Felicia admires her maturity. The two women are good for each other, but then everything falls apart after an unjustified, impulsive outburst from Felicia sends Caitland back into therapy.
At that point, Felicia begins to learn that living on the surface and in denial brings only more pain. Her struggle toward self-knowledge and self-acceptance is anything but smooth, tribulations abound, but in the end, she finds happiness.
You would think that such a serious theme would be written in a serious tone. Such is not the case: the book is a comic, hearty, joyful romp through the New-Age culture of Southern California, serving up a mix of religion, self-help groups, artsy snobs, an Italian Count gigolo and, incredibly, soft-sculpture dolls which lead to Felicia's redemption.
Evelyn Cole is a master of dialog. She sprinkles her book with comparisons that take your breath away, such as this description of a screechy woman: "her voice was worse than the sound of two Styrofoam cups doing it". Gambling for Good Mail is a pleasure to read. The serious lessons it teaches go down easy sprinkled with the sugar of rollicking good humor.
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