Leaving Eden (Ballantine Reader's Circle) [Kindle Edition]

Anne LeClaire (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dreams of Hollywood fame descend on the denizens of even the smallest of small towns, and Eden, Va., is no exception. When 16-year-old Tallie Brock spots a poster advertising a $20 makeover and photo session-Glamour Day, the offer is dubbed-she is convinced it's her ticket to movie stardom. Hollywood dreaming runs in the family. Tallie's mother, Dinah Mae, a dead ringer for Natalie Wood, even named her daughter after Wood. When Tallie was 12, Dinah Mae spent six months in Los Angeles, hoping to land a role as Natalie in a television biopic. Upon her return, Tallie was eager for news of what Dinah Mae had been doing, but had to resort to eavesdropping when her mother would confide only in her best friend, Martha Lee. Ever since Dinah Mae got back, she hasn't been herself and Tallie is afraid that she'll lose her mother again. To keep worry at bay, she writes in her journal, moons over handsome, rich Spaulding Reynolds, worries about her mill-worker father's drinking and dreams of fleeing tiny Eden. What follows is a journey marked by both pain and pleasure. LeClaire's pacing is uneven, her major revelations are awkwardly timed and the tragic incident that triggers the denouement is stagily introduced. Still, Tallie is an endearing character, and the Southern banter of the ladies at the beauty parlor where she works is pitch-perfect. Despite bumps in the delivery, LeClaire's (Entering Normal) homey storytelling goes down easy.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Adrift in Eden, Amherst County, Virginia, high-school senior Tallie Burke tries to resurrect her mother, Deanie, by recollection and imagination. Mama left her not once, but twice. First, she made an ill-conceived stab at Hollywood stardom; then, after returning from Tinseltown less than a year later, she died of advanced cancer in just a few months. By 1992, Tallie has been motherless four years. She contends with a brokenhearted dad who drinks; thus she leads a lifestyle a half-step above trailer trash, and she lusts for wellborn "Spy" Reynolds. No wonder Tallie yearns for the end of senior year, so she can fly to Hollywood and fulfill her mother's dream. But Tallie, though more than ready to escape once she tips for the local Klip-N-Kurl's Glamour Day promotion--a complete makeover with 9-by-12 glossies for only $20--and buys her ticket, allows her desperation to make her betray longtime bonds. Saturated with death and loss yet bursting with life, a beautiful, reflective meditation on friendship in its many guises. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 446 KB
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (December 18, 2007)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000XUBBWI
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #587,273 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Glimpses, March 24, 2003

By 

Beverly J. Scott "Author and avid reader" (Ankeny, IA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Leaving Eden (Hardcover)

Leclaire's coming of age narrative, "Leaving Eden" is more about growing up and finding out that your dreams of leaving lead you instead back home. Tallie Brock struggles with growing up without her mother's counsel, never noticing how many people care about her. While following a dream she thought was her own, Tallie uncovers secrets that lead to her own growth, to an understanding about family love and loyality and in the end, the path to her place in this world. Leclaire's insight into the emotions of growing up will put "Leaving Eden" on the best seller list.
Beverly J Scott author of RIGHTEOUS REVENGE...

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars laugh out loud funny, December 16, 2002

By 

"creolegee" (Inglewood, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Leaving Eden (Hardcover)

This book is so funny, it is laugh out loud funny. Do not miss this book. It reminds me of Fannie Flagg. Good story line, good characters, a perfect book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wise, compassionate and evocative "Eden" celebrates hope, July 18, 2003

By 

Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Leaving Eden (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

What does it mean to make wise choices in life? How is it possible for a sensitive teen-ager to comprehend the significance of a mother's love when its source is no longer present? How much should one risk for dreams, desires and hopes? What is it about wanting that makes it so consuming, so overpowering? Anne LeClaire's sensitive, lyrical and evocative coming-of-age novel, "Leaving Eden," provides stunning, instructive answers. Her protagonist, sixteen year-old Tallie Brock does not consider her hometown of suggestively-named Eden, Virginia to be paradise; nor does she realize that the knowledge she so earnestly seeks about life could compel her to an act of self-banishment.

What Talie does know is heartbreak and abandonment. Not once, but twice, does her mother leave her. Blessed with Natalie Wood-like looks, Dinah Mae Brock wrestles with her own need to live out her dreams. After Dinah Mae abruptly leaves her diligent, devoted husband Luddy for the hopes of realizing her life-long ambition of becoming a Hollywood stgar, her bright, inquisitive but disaffected daughter must confront her own demons and ask herself questions she is not initially prepared to confront.

Without the comfort and security of her mother, Tallie lacks "context" for her life and yearns to see the "whole picture" instead of the "jangly bits and pieces that didn't seem to fit." Insecure with her own physical appearance, a social outsider whose anxieties are exacerbated by an intolerably smug and critical maternal grandmother, Tallie has yet to discover that "things don't always have to be laid out straight as string to make sense." Trying to make sense of his own loneliness, Luddy takes to drink to obliterate pain. One parent dead, the other remote and silent, Tallie seeks answers through involvement in the Klip-N-Kurl beauty salon, where the town's women congregate to share gossip, secrets, and occasional comfort.

Just as quickly as she had left Eden, Dinah Mae returns, but with even more unanswered questions. The novel pivots around the issue of unresolved dreams and wants. Both mother and daughter must face how to fulfill the lives they have been given while being true to themselves and the one they love. In desperation, Tallie turns to the town's pariah "witch," whose Queen of Cures causes more consternation to Tallie than comfort. Tallie muses, "It's hard to figure out what will kill you and what will cure you" and even more difficuilt to figure out the difference, she unknowingly sets an outline for her own life.

The second abandonment is even more wrenching, more final as Tallie must observe her mother's unsuccessful battle with cancer. LeClaire is nothing less than brilliant in her exploration of an adolescent's existential anguish and resounding pain at the loss of a beloved parent. Tallie yearns to have her mother tell her "everything" she needs to know about life. As she rails at the unfairness of her mother's death, Tallie also castigates herself for her own inability to ask the right questions, provide enough solace and deflect physical pain.

As Tallie discovers "wanting is a powerful thing," she embarks on a bumpy road of self-discovery in which her sexuality, capacity for truth and ability to deceive combine to compel her to an act of self-defintion and discovery. She learns that dreams, "the conceiving of possibilities that stretch" beyond the single person, necessarily must animate life; the act of want transcends its attainment. Tallie ultimately will come to grips with one of life's greatest dilemmas, a choice between regret and remorse.

Interspersed in this fast-paced narrative are bite-sized morsels of Tallie's wisdom, written in her private journal. Each aphorism derives from experience and love, from the intricate web of friendships Tallie has created in Eden and from the solitude of suffering and desire in her own heart. Anne LeClaire has created a genuinely moving description of wisdom's costs and love's possibilities. "Leaving Eden" will leave readers profoundly moved.