Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
frustrating, February 7, 2006
This book starts out with everything going for it: intriguing characters, an intimate look at the underbelly of Miami in the
1950's. But somewhere in there, Godwin seems to have completely bypassed the plot. She gets the nitty gritty of a newsroom right, and then does very little with it.
There was, I felt, an element of "Mary Sue-ishness" in it. Except for the evil stepfather (a minor character without the rich extensive history given most of the others), everyone seems to be standing in line to tell Emma (protagonist) how clever, pretty, stylish, bold, talented writer/reporter, she is. This got annoying. Except for a streak of perfectionism, she was perfect! That makes for a boring heroine no matter how "grirry" her job.
Also, the title is misleading. Emma, through sheer coincidence, manages to make contact with a young woman who gained notoriety by running a charm school for call girls. I expected much more of her story, which was dropped for pages before being brought up again at the end. This was frustrating because the "Queen of the Underworld" was a truly fascinating character, even more so than the heroine.
In addition for someone who has been extensively physically and sexually abused as a girl, Emma's adult relationships were amazingly stress free and wholesome. How can she possibly trust men as partners wholeheartedly after being beaten and raped by her stepfather? This rang false.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Lackluster, trite and disappointing, January 2, 2007
Like many of the others who have reviewed this book, I am a longtime fan of Gail Godwin and found most of her other books rich, complex and rewarding. I was pleased to see she had a new book out.
After completing around 100 pages, I was still waiting for anything to happen, other than the introduction of characters, the writing of a few newspaper stories by Emma, and several meals. I determined that I would finish the book regardless, and it was a disappointment that by the end, I still felt that essentially very little of interest had happened.
Many plot threads were introduced and never resolved. These dead ends were distracting, because I had noted them and imbued them with future significance, which never happened. For example, Emma's aunt Tess is involved in a plot with her employer, a Cuban expatriate dentist, to smuggle weapons into Cuba. We never learn how either of them became involved in this, what eventually happened with the weapons, or the significance of their involvement. The plot, if you can call it that, was thin and aimless. With such rich potential - the Miami of the late 50s, during the early days of Castro's regime - the plot could have been incredibly meaningful and complex - but unfortunately it's almost as if we see it through the eyes of an uninformed person who doesn't understand what she is seeing.
Most of the characters are rather flat and undeveloped. I hate to say it, but they seem like caricatures. An example is Lydia, the Cuban mother of Alex, the manager of Emma's hotel. From statements that Alex makes, we realize that he feels manipulated and used by his mother, but this is never explored or explained. She's just a self-centered fashion plate who likes to throw parties. The only really well-developed character is Emma, and I found myself disliking her more and more as she was fleshed out. I too realized that this book must be autobiographical, and wondered to myself about a character who accepts the gifts and kindnesses of her lover Paul's wife, while carrying on an affair with her husband behind her back. With apparently no guilty conscience! The book also implies that she accepts gifts and money from Paul too. It happens, but it's not endearing, and doesn't seem to cause Emma any remorse.
Every author has a right to a clunker or two, and the usually reliable Gail Godwin must have had a bad year with this one. I gave it two stars because her writing is still enjoyable and there are moments when it shines, usually when she is describing something. She can evoke a time and place, although I don't think she did justice to her setting, other than the Julia Tuttle Hotel, which was nicely described.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Education Of A Young Woman, March 5, 2006
Gail Godwin's latest novel is all about Emma Gant, recently graduated from a university in North Carolina, and embarking on her first real job as a beginning reporter (she writes obits) for the MIAMI STAR. Apparently we are to think of both Jane Austin's EMMA and Thomas Wolfe's LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL when we meet this character. She has all the enthusiasm and naivete we expect from a young woman who celebrates her twenty-second birthday during the week or so that this novel spans in 1959. A bourbon and beer girl, she hardly knows the difference between a yarmulke and a guayabera, is subject to the many pitfalls that a novice makes on any beginning career and of course encounters the sexism at the newspaper we would expect from males of that era. She sometimes asks the wrong questions and is provincial when it comes to world events. She works hard, however, at being sophisticated and hopes that not many people in the Julia Tuttle, the hotel where she is staying, will witness her first visit to the hotel pool since neither her swimsuit nor her Bass Weejuns are what a fashionable young woman would be wearing. Naive she may be, but not too naive to be having an affair with Paul Nightingale, a Jewish restaurant owner twenty years her senior, and not above taking money from his unsuspecting wife to purchase an expensivse pair of pumps from Saks Fifth Avenue.
Godwin makes both Emma and the many characters she encounters, many of them refugees who have fled Castro's Cuba, as well as the City of Miami itself, come alive in vivid detail: Paul's Aunt Stella, a survivor of the Holocaust and a designer of custom perfumes; Alex de Costa, a Cuban American hotel employee who has a mild crush on Emma; his many-times-married mother Lidia; Emma's mother's friend Tess; the newspaper employees et al. Most importantly, however, is the suicidal character Ginevra Snow, the "queen of the underworld," a retired madam now married to a psychiatrist, with whom Emma becomes obsessed. From key lime pie to Howard Johnson's to the humidity, Godwin gets the city just right as well.
With language that only a first class writer is capable of, Godwin guides the reader through the education of this young woman with humor and flair. Emma quickly learns some lessons she didn't count on-- about her friend Tess and her lover Paul in particular. Godwin, however, leaves the reader wanting more, as we do not know how successful Emma will be on her new outpost away from the downtown Miami location of the paper, what will be the outcome of her complicated relationship with Paul, and will she ever write about the Queen of the Underworld?
If you believe that a good fiction writer should first and foremost tell a good story, than Ms. Godwin meets all the requirements. Secondly she has created a person all of us can identify with as practically everyone under the sun has had to live through the early days of being on his or her own for the very first time.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
