Customer Reviews

Judy Garland, Ginger Love

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Nicole Cooley's Judy Garland, Ginger Love creates a splendid world where two sisters, twins, explore their relationships to each other and to their distant mother. Cooley's use of the famous Judy Garland in this triangle between the two daughters and their mother is fresh and captivating. Her first novel overfills my expectation and provides anticipation for the next one from this talented woman.

This novel deconstructs our established, canonical view of marriage and the relation between members of a family.It is impossible to emerge from a reading of this novel without an entirely new view of our own world. The novel is a devastating experience for the male reader.

A tale of two twin sisters, each of them a bit neurotic in their own different way, on a quest to find their mother who abandoned them at 16. This is a gripping and unusual narrative, full of psychological insight into the nature of sisterhood and the powerful appeal that our childhood desires still make on our adult lives.

The characters are utterly compelling and the plot engaging, but what I like best about the book is its poetic prose. The novel is full of lyrical almost incantatory passages; the images do the metaphorical work they set out to do. The fantasy world the sisters share is conveyed in a language just haunting enough, just strange enough. I was deeply moved by this novel.

I know very little about twins and even less about Judy Garland, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Thematically, the book examines the darker sides of love, intertwining the lives of the main characters and the life of Judy Garland. The coupling is beautifully surreal and the end result is a novel that often reads like poetry.

The characters in this novel are so compelling, I couldn't put it down. I felt caught up in the sisters' journey, unable to leap from the car as we hurtled through a landscape of family memory and imagination. What I especially loved about the novel was its evocative imagery--the hotel, the swimming pool, the wierd, salvaged clothes. This will definitely be one of the books I give friends for Christmas.

The book has a momentum that carries the reader deeper and deeper into the psyche of a women running from her husband, the memory of her stillborn child and most specifically herself. Though I found myself incredibly disturbed by the behavior of Alice's sister, Madeline, I too was addicted to the chaos of their journey, the glitter of the fantasy and desperation that drove them to continue a futile search for their mother. Don't read this book when you must run an errand or meet a friend for dinner because this book is intoxicating and is difficult to put down! I have always been fascinated by the bond between sisters and Judy Garland, Ginger Love explored the fragile and explosive connection that sisters can have. We have all had the destructive thoughts that Alice has but few of us have carried them out as she does.

The book reads in one sitting, like a wonderful potboiler narrative, and yet has incredible intricacy and power. I want to read it again! It's a stunner, the way Cooley creates images, motifs--characters. I also am haunted by the wonderful love story in the book.

I found this book to be so very great that i read the entire book in a Saturday afternoon. I am shocked by the negative reviews, and feel the people who wrote them lack a bit of imagination. This is a wonderful story of 3 generations of woman ( 2 of twins ) and dealing with a life less then perfect or planned. I truly loved it.

Twins Alice and Madeline grew up in a run-down motel, where their young single mother Lily worked as a maid and encouraged their fantasies about stardom. Along with the tales of Judy Garland, Lily also gave her daughters tips on bulimia, which she'd learned from the grandmother who raised her.

Growing up, the twins used the motel's old swimming pool, long ago drained of water, as their personal "Emerald City" -- the place where they imagined they were Judy Garland and Ginger Love, the younger sister they'd dreamt up for her. When the world around them was less than promising, Alice and Madeline knew they could always turn to Emerald City for comfort.

By the time the girls are in high school, Alice has left Emerald City behind as part of her childhood. Madeline, however, has not. In fact, she seems even more childlike than ever, and drops out of high school to engage in dress-up and remain with her Judy Garland paper dolls all day. Alice feels helpless, especially when Lily doesn't seem to care.

A few months before their 18th birthday, Lily moves her daughters to a condemned house in Florida. Her grim parenting duty done, she leaves the two a little money, and disappears.

Despite the hopelessness of the situation, Alice digs in, and rises above it all. She pursues her lifelong interest in art, furthers her education, and marries a loving, supportive man. The one dimmed spot in her happiness is Madeline, from whom she has become estranged after Madeline's stay in a mental hospital.

After Alice tragically loses her much-awaited baby, she receives an invitation from Madeline. Her twin is convinced they can find Lily, and when they do, the three of them will be a family again -- the only family she believes any of them can ever have. Despite her husband's reservations, Alice sets off for Florida, where she attempts to rebuild her relationship with Madeline. Unlike her sister, she isn't too sure they can find Lily -- or that they'd even want to -- but after what's happened with her own daughter, Alice is full of all sorts of questions and jumbled feelings about the relationships between parents and children, which she needs to resolve before she can even think about trying to move on with her life.

As many other reviewers said, this is indeed a rather odd, and exhausting, novel. It's almost as though the reader is forced to live through Madeline's complicated presence along with Alice, which may well be the effect that Cooley intended. Still, it's definitely an interesting read, which will leave you unable to abandon it until you get the answers that Alice and Madeline are seeking themselves.