Iron Shoes: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Molly Giles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2000

From acclaimed short story writer Molly Giles, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated collection "Rough Translations," comes this splendid debut novel about one woman's spirited search for identity and meaning following her family's disintegration.

Set amid the woodsy affluence of Northern California, "Iron Shoes" incisively chronicles the coming-of-middle-age story of Kay Sorensen, who has lived her entire life in the shadow of her glamorous parents. When Kay hits forty, she is suddenly smacked with the realization that she is not the woman she wants to be -- and certainly not the woman her family wants her to be. Her emotionally detached father will never forgive her for dropping out of Juilliard at eighteen; her dramatic, showstopping mother will never comprehend how she turned out so ordinary; and her fastidious, self-controlled second husband will never accept her weakness for red meat, cigarettes, and alcohol. Worst of all, Kay cannot forgive herself for giving up on her dreams and settling -- for a husband she doesn't love, for an amateurish church orchestra, for a dead-end job at a library bound to lose its funding. Unable to shake the feeling that she's somehow stuck, Kay lives vicariously through her free-spirited friend Zabeth and pins her hopes for the future on Charles Lichtman, a beguiling stranger with whom she feels destined to have an affair. But when her mother's illness -- seemingly feigned for as long as Kay can remember -- finally takes her life, Kay feels her ennui and stasis painfully give way to an unnerving helplessness. Losing a lifelong crutch, she is suddenly set adrift -- weightless, without a compass, and without hope.

With her crystalline proseand seamless mixing of tender tragedy and laugh-out-loud humor, Molly Giles delivers a deeply moving exploration of a middle-aged woman who has never asked herself -- nor answered -- an honest question in her life. At once heartrending, hilarious, and wise, "Iron Shoes" is a mesmerizing debut novel.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Marooned in a loveless marriage and on the cusp of a full-blown midlife crisis, Kay Sorensen hardly needs the additional grief of tending to a dying parent. Tribulations compound however: as she frets over her manipulative and fading mother, Ida, she must also reckon with her father's indifference, her husband's insufficiencies, and--she fears--her own squandered potential. Such is the treacherous and often bitterly comedic territory Molly Giles wanders in her first novel, Iron Shoes, where the Northern California semi-serenity fails to allay one family's apparent disintegration.

As Kay puts in her part-time hours paging at the local library, she ponders her as-yet-undiscovered true calling and indulges fantasies of an affair. It's almost a relief to be distracted from her immobilizing frustrations by her mother's decline. Full of bitter and contentious self-pity, Ida trudges downward gracelessly. Her death provokes ever-worsening pangs of self-doubt in Kay, as she and her condemnatory father fumble to make sense of their relationship. Kay is pushed toward both revelation and decision: "If you can clean up the mess outside then maybe the mess inside will straighten out too," she opines. It's the "maybe" that muddles her tidy formula.

Iron Shoes is alternately sobering and breezy as Giles moves from the more unpleasant inevitabilities of Kay's world to the often absurd stratagems of family reconciliation. An ensemble cast enlivens things as well: Kay's sexy and audacious friend Zabeth counsels her and--just maybe--is coming on to her father, and her husband Neal is obsessed with a healthful diet but forgetful even of how many years he and Kay have been married. If at times the heroine's travails seem something of a caricature of fortysomething despair, Giles picks up the slack with a few well-placed narrative sleights of hand. Throughout, Kay's bafflement at other people's apparently well-manicured lives rings at perfect pitch. --Ben Guterson

From Publishers Weekly

Though they are monstrously selfish, Ida and Francis McLeod, the aging parents of the middle-aged protagonist of Giles's haunting first novel (after her short story collection, Rough Translations), are drawn with such nuanced understanding that one ends up as sorry for their shallow lives as for their daughter's crushed and battered psyche. The glamorous, alcoholic, self-indulgent Sorensens are too immature to be parents. They have cowed their daughter, Kay, once a promising pianist, into a frantically abject servant to their many whims and demands, to the detriment of both her own marriage and her abilities to nurture her young son. Over the years, Ida has suffered many "accidents" that have resulted in injuries and crisis surgery (her second leg has just been amputated), a perverse form of punishment of irresponsible Francis and of servitude for Kay. An assistant at a small local library in Northern California, Kay endures her mother's vicious asides and blatant manipulation, as well as her father's sarcastic wit. Unwittingly, Kay has married another cool, distant man; Victor, her husband, stays away from her in bed and refuses to engage in conversation. It's no wonder that she conceives a crush on a hunk, a painter whom she meets at the library. After her mother's medical condition goes downhill and her husband becomes even more remote, Kay smothers her feelings in alcohol, sweet foods and cigarettes, only dimly aware that she has willingly assumed the "iron shoes" she describes in a fairy tale she tells her son. Giles's psychological portrait of Kay is completely credible; it's easy to see Kay's lack of self-esteem as a reflexive response from her to chronic emotional abuse. None of this is as lugubrious as it sounds, because Giles's narrative is animated with zesty prose, whip-smart observations and a refreshing roster of minor characters. In spite of the dark terrain this novel navigates, it is a sparkling and witty account of one woman's belated coming-of-age. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684859939
• ISBN-13: 978-0684859934
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,166,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just Excellent..., September 19, 2000

By 

sally barry - See all my reviews

This review is from: Iron Shoes: A Novel (Hardcover)

Here we have a 40-ish female whose life seems perfectly nice. Married, nice part-time job, friends and family, lives in a beautiful part of the country, cute little boy, saucy empowering best friend. Look closer: marriage going downhill fast, job about to be eliminated, and her parents!!! Hag-ridden by a truly monstrous, alcoholic, sharp-as-a-razor mother - but the mother is dying, and the mother is deeply loved. She has her faults, but she is your mother. Remote, sarcastic, alcoholic father - but the father is also deeply loved. Who doesn't want the love and approval of Daddy? Born-again, weak, bible thumping brother - but you can't hate him, he came from the same place you did! Uncommunicative, secretive husband, downing health potions, distancing himself more every day - well, some things you may be unable to fix. Sounds awful, but Ms. Giles makes all of this both hilarious and tragic. You will laugh and you will cry. There are tons of stories about women and their midlife crises out there (including the paragon, "Diary of a Mad Housewife"), and as the midlife crisis is a perennial subject, many of the stories have a sameness to them. Worries about growing older, about a failing marriage, thoughts of having an affair to affirm that you are still attractive and desirable, and the looming realization that parents are not going to be here all that much longer. The looming realization that you can, yes, you can grow stronger and take charge of your own life and for once make yourself happy. Facing the death and decline of your parents, no matter how lousy they were - they are dear to you and no matter how old you are, you want their love and approval as much as when you were six years old. Ms. Giles takes all of these elements of the same old story and writes beautifully, making it a joy to read. You have to shake your head at our frazzled heroine, tell her to grow up, to get a grip, at the same time you want to hug her. Hey, it's easy to sneer at this middle aged child-woman, but she spent her whole life with two monsters and she can't just change overnight. But there are definite signs of hope at the end of this book, and you cheer for her. As in many stories of this type, the setting is in an upper middle class town: money is no problem, at least for the parents, which may make the heroine's life easier. She doesn't have to worry about Medicare or Meals on Wheels or home aides - the dying mother is draped in mink and diamonds and there is a loyal, hard working housekeeper pitching in. But death and dying is never easy, especially when there's so much you want to hear, or say, and time is running out. I just loved this book, it is very well done of its type, it has dark humor , bitterness, despair, anguish, wit, and hope. I finished Iron Shoes this morning and put it aside genuinely sorry to see it end.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Iron Shoes Slow the Pace,and Stunt Character Growth, January 4, 2001

By 

Nancy at Foxworthy Books (San Jose,, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Iron Shoes: A Novel (Hardcover)

Molly Giles is an excellent SHORT story writer , and after reading her previous story collections ( Rough Translations and Creek Walk), I really looked forward to this first novel. WRONG. Iron Shoes is a s-t-r-e-c-h-e-d out short story and should be, at most,a short novel within a short story collection. The pace is slow, like a snails ,or even slower at times. I question the need for the inclusion of some characters ,who just take up space on the page , and are not needed for the thin storyline.

Kay Sorenson,age 40,has problems...most that have been around for a long long time such as her prissy second husband,not interested father,and lack of self-worth ( OH MY ,we could see this coming)as manifested in a tiny job,tiny house, and tiny life driven by unresolved guilt, unwarrented fear and the need for,in my opinion , a kick-start to the rear. Ida, her Drama Queen mother, is the reason I kept reading this book. I wanted to know about what outrageous , self-centered (but with true DQ style ) thing she would say or do next.Ida was the only character with ( some irony here)some LIFE in her! Kay needs to GROW UP, and I felt cheated that it took 239 pages for her to take a few toddler's steps toward this goal.

Get Molly Giles short story collections--- even in hardback , but I would advise waiting for the paperback of Iron Shoes, if you are still determined to read it!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, July 30, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Iron Shoes: A Novel (Paperback)

When I first started reading this book, I thought, oh, my, these people are all a mess! Some of the ridicule and constantly demeaning situations Kay, the main character, tollerates, are just over the top. However, she tugs at your heart because she is obviously a big, messy, loving woman whose big heartedness is taken for granted by all around her. She drinks too much, smokes too much, and does too much, but who wouldn't with a family like this? When she finally begins to take ahold of her life, kicks the awful husband out and stops drinking, you know that she is on the road to discovery. Nothing momentous, but something profound. The author says that this is a comedy about alcoholism and dying, but it is not. There are sharply funny moments, but this is not a funny book.