Going Nowhere Sideways [Paperback]

Leigh Curran (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1999

Going Nowhere Sideways follows the life of Molly Williams through landmark experiences, from young adulthood and Woodstock to middle age and the fall of the Berlin wall. In between come marriages, lovers--both male and female, motherhood, and artistic exploration. Journal extracts provide information about Molly's inner life and her self-exploration.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Energetic, fictive diary entries track one woman's 1960s and '70s in this engaging, well-constructed first novel. Molly Williams is 40 and near suicide when she begins rereading the journals she started in 1969; the story they tell comprises most of the novel. Young Molly, a sheltered Connecticut WASP, sees her New York boyfriend kissing a man, flees him and finds herself at Woodstock, where she drops acid, flips out and gets help from a sensitive Chinese-American man called Johnson, who becomes her long-term companion. Back in New York City, Molly immerses herself in late-hippie culture, works at a New Age bookstore, embraces the goal of "unconditional love." She follows Johnson and his young son to a farm in Pennsylvania owned by Johnson's neurotic wife, Mathilda. By 1979, Johnson has become an altruistic lawyer, working against pollution and for Native Americans; Molly considers his politics self-serving, and his desire for another child a ruse to defeat Mathilda. The disillusioned Molly becomes involved with Nancy, a celebrated photographer. Later journals cover downtown New York's sex-and-art scenes, and the frightening advent of AIDS. Curran, an actress and playwright (The Lunch Girls; Alternations) has made her first novel partly a tour of its decades' zeitgeists, and mostly a story of slow growing-up. It asks, and shows, how a young woman of Molly's obvious intelligence could be exposed to so much '60s altruism and yet lack a sense of who she is. Curran's prose maneuvers ably between the requirements of narrative drive and the improvised feel of real journals; interpolated present-tense scenes give Molly's story a satisfying conclusion. Readers may want to shake Molly at times, but they'll enjoy sharing most of her trip.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher

August, 1969. Molly Williams is young, conservative and inexperienced when she discovers her boyfriend necking with his male roommate in a Greenwich Village restaurant. She freaks out, hitches a ride to Woodstock, does drugs for the first time and winds up in medical emergency in the arms of Johnson, a gentle, spiritual Asian-American.

Thus begins a roller-coaster ride that takes Molly through the thrills and fears of growth and complicated relationships. When things don't work out with Johnson, Molly becomes emotionally, physically, and artistically involved with her former sister-in-law, Nancy, in a relationship full of fire.

Molly survives twenty years of emotional adventure and emerges a fully realized woman and artist. Along the way she has lived in the real world, a world made up of the Vietnam War, Nixon, gay rights, Reagan and artistic trends that marked the passing decades between Woodstock and the end of the Cold War.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Daniel & Daniel Publishers (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156474289X
• ISBN-13: 978-1564742896
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,317,641 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars FANTASTIC... tender, infuriating and completely human., August 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Going Nowhere Sideways (Paperback)

Molly takes you on a journey of memories long ago obscured by the hype and break neck pace of the digital age. A time when the country was in turmoil and everyone was trying to find a deeper meaning and context to the chaos. Molly, as our tour guide, is intelligent, sincere and on a personal quest to live a "useful" life. While it takes her 20 years to figure it out, it seems all too brief for this reader who couldn't put the book down and longs for the next installment. Molly's tale is at once tender, intelligent, at times infuriating, and completely human. I loved every word! Leigh Curran is an exceptional writer... poetic and profound.

5.0 out of 5 stars Human, fun, moving and so, so true, August 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Going Nowhere Sideways (Paperback)

I did not know what to expect when I picked up this book for reading on a business trip. I got so involved in the richly real characters that I could hardly tear myself away to go to meetings. I finished it on a plane, and I sat reading til the plane cleared out because I still had a couple of pages to go. The book is beautifully constructed, with an unpredictable, almost musical flow, and the characters will stay with me for life.

This is one of those "best friend" books you tell your best friends about, as I have done. There are moments and images that have stayed with me for the months since I read it.

If you came to consciousness in the '60s, or know someone who did, revisit the times and how they grew into a gentle wisdom in the '90s. I thank Leigh Curran for this beautiful work.

5.0 out of 5 stars it's so good I don't want to finish it, June 17, 1999

By 

David Graham "Would that I could write as Ms.... (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Going Nowhere Sideways (Paperback)

I was invited to a book signing by the author having known her casually many years ago. Aware of a play she had written I went, bought the book had it signed, gave Leigh Curran a hug and left. Having reading material at home that had to be attended to I left it in my car to be picked up when I had a few spare moments. Now almost three quarters of the way through I find her narrative so moving that I am portioning off the remainder so that I won't come to the end too quickly.