The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters [Hardcover]

Timothy Schaffert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 23, 2002

In Timothy Schaffert's seriocomic debut, two sisters on the cusp of womanhood struggle to understand their father's suicide as well as their mother's abandonment of them many years earlier.

Lily and Mabel live on their own in their grandmother's antique shop in rural Nebraska. They are bonded by their loyalty to each other and their haunting urgency to reconcile their own versions of the past so that they might build their futures together.

In a rebellious act, Lily steals a car with her boyfriend and heads southwest to an Arizona vineyard to confront her mother. Mabel stays behind, seeking to commune somehow with her father's ghost.

In a story that rises out of the spare Nebraska landscape, Schaffert delivers a textured, eccentric, and redemptive tale about two young women searching for wholeness and love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Schaffert's heartfelt debut features two young misfit sisters left alone to run a junk shop in rural Nebraska. Mabel and Lily Rollow (21 and 18, respectively) have inherited the jumbled store from their grandmother, who left their small town a few months earlier. This latest act of neglect opens the childhood wounds of their father's suicide and their mother's abandonment, the phantom limbs through which they feel very real pain. The sisters draw strength from each other, but are as different as they can be physically and temperamentally; seductive Lily is kittenish and quixotic, while heavyset, bespectacled Mabel is the sensible one. The girls do agree on their mutual object of affection, 19-year-old Jordan, the cheap wine-swilling "cute ruin" who likens his preoccupation with suicide to "having a crush on a mean girl." But he falls for Lily and the lovebirds embark on a road trip to the Southwest to find the girls' mother, leaving Mabel alone to run the shop and exorcise her demons (a process that involves visiting a brain-damaged, former glue-sniffing addict rumored to communicate with the dead). Though the emotional terrain is familiar, and Schaffert occasionally overexplains his characters, the wistful coming-of-age story is solidly crafted and enlivened by quirky, Gothic touches and gentle humor. National publicity; online reading group guide.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Lily and Mabel's father committed suicide, their mother left them with their grandmother, and their grandmother left them for a Florida condo. Closing in on their twenties, they seek to have normal lives but have no model for what normal is. The dusty, cluttered junk shop where they live is a metaphor for their eccentric and confused lives. Lily, the younger of the two, steals a car and heads for Mexico to find Mom. Mabel, abandoned once more, clears out the junk shop by moving everything into the front yard and chooses as a boyfriend someone who understands loss his sister drowned in a pool accident. Schaffert creates funny, bizarre, and yet touching characters who possess depth and breadth. The result is yet another madcap coming-of-age story but one that speaks to the plight of the current generation. Despite suicide, abandonment, poverty, and isolation, it appears that the Rollow girls will always muddle through. Full of surprises, Schaffert's debut is recommended for public libraries. Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Blue Hen; 1St Edition edition (May 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399149007
• ISBN-13: 978-0399149009
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,824,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Timothy Schaffert grew up on a farm in Nebraska and currently lives in Omaha. His short fiction has been published in several literary journals and he's won numerous awards, including the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award and the Nebraska Book Award.

He is the author of two other critically-acclaimed novels, The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God and Devils in the Sugar Shop. - Author photo by Rodney Rahl

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating clutter . . ., August 8, 2005

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters (Mass Market Paperback)

One of the odder well-written books I've read in a long while. Author Schaffert crafts sentences in a beguiling way, piling up details and creating situations with the logic of dreams, propelling the reader along, until the book becomes a lot like getting lost in a fun house. And looking back at vantage points in the narrative, it doesn't all make a lot of sense. The Rollow Sisters (Mabel, not her real name; and Lily) don't have "phantom limbs" except in some metaphorical sense that's left to the reader to puzzle out. Abandoned by every member of their family (one of them a suicide) the two young women live in a house crammed with mostly worthless junk for sale, which clutters the story itself in fascinating detail.

Meanwhile, their heads are filled with another kind of clutter - attitudes, poses, bits of storylines from movies, magazines, tabloids, and a dozen other forms of popular culture. The two of them inhabit a world of imagination in a suspended state of arrested development. One of them suddenly leaves with a boyfriend in search of their mother. The other becomes strangely involved with a grieving family of brothers. Recommended for readers who like out of the ordinary and not so obvious fiction that keeps you guessing how all the pieces will eventually fit together.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book!, January 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters (Hardcover)

Warmhearted and assured, this debut novel sparkles. Hotheaded Lily and perverse Mabel are wonderful characters, longing to find their places in a precarious world. There are many delightful and quirky touches along the way, and beneath the lively surface there is a sure and steady heartbeat. Mabel and Lily lingered in my mind long after I finished the book.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book!, January 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters (Hardcover)

Warmhearted and assured, this debut novel sparkles. Hotheaded Lily and perverse Mabel are wonderful characters, longing to find their places in a precarious world. There are many delightful and quirky touches along the way, and beneath the lively surface there is a sure and steady heartbeat. Mabel and Lily lingered in my mind long after I finished the book.