Skirts [Hardcover]

Mimi Albert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1994

In New York in 1961 a brilliant young college student gets her won apartment and tries a life of sex, drugs and jazz, tortured by one of the reigning gods of the emerging counterculture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With biting humor and a firm sense of place, Albert ( The Second Story Man ) evokes a scene that was both exciting and dangerous: the New York bohemian subculture in the early 1960s. Archeology student Helene Elphrick desperately wants to shed both her controlling Jewish parents and her middle-class morality. Lonely and vulnerable, she is an easy mark for Zalman Finster, a Hasidic rabbi turned artist who introduces the giddy young woman to the avant-garde cultural scene and to a wide variety of mood-altering drugs. With sharply perceptive writing that catches the essence of provocative characters, the author takes Helene through the wildly energetic bohemian counterculture of the day. In her forays to the Cedar Tavern, former hangout for Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, and Stanley's Bar, she is joined by her impressionable friends Victoria and Ruth, and the three easily succumb to posturing, fraud and much worse. Bolstered by a gritty and brutal city background and enriched by a colorful lot of scruffy intellectuals, Helene's adventures become a heady tale of loss of innocence. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In Skirts , Albert returns to Manhattan in the Sixties, the territory of her acclaimed first novel, Second Story Man ( LJ 1/15/76). Her protagonists are cousins Ruth and Helene, both in flight from the stifling respectability of their lower-middle-class Bronx families. Along with their friend Victoria, the young women collect experiences, men, and ideas. Life is an adventure until both cousins are seduced by Zalman Finster, a Village character who dazzles the women with nihilism, jazz, sex, and, above all, drugs. Albert's narrative resembles a jazz concerto with Helene as the melody augmented by riffs from Ruth, Victoria, and Zalman and counterpoint provided by a disapproving chorus of family and friends. As Helene and Ruth are drawn into Zalman's vortex, the author brilliantly re-creates that moment when the sun had set on the Beats but not yet risen on the Sixties youth rebellion. With lucid prose and achingly real characterizations, Albert fulfills the promise of her early fiction. For most collections.
- Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, Kan.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 259 pages
• Publisher: Baskerville Publishers (April 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880909138
• ISBN-13: 978-1880909133
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,237,540 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric and earthy. Held my interest start to finish., September 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Skirts (Hardcover)

I enjoyed entering the world of "Skirts" and read the book eagerly. It had no competition for my attention while I was reading it. I did not previously have any particular affinity for either New York or the Sixties beat scene, but Mimi Albert made them both so real for me I didn't think of categories but just about the lives of the young women I was reading about. Her writing was very grounded in time and place and her scenes wonderfully visualized. The book was absolutely swarming with mood and yet I never lost my bearings. Albert was always in control of her story and kept with with her start to finish.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Beat Generation in the 60s in Greenwich Village, September 16, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Skirts (Hardcover)

This award-winning book deserves far more recognition than it's getting. Skirts is the mesmerizing story of three young women on their own in Greenwich Village, seeking excitement among the Beat Generation. Mimi Albert (The Second Story Man) writes with power of the seduced and the seducer with Zalman, the handsome son of a rabbi, urging `turning on' to life (which includes drugs). He is both alluring and scary, esp as he lures the innocent Helene deeper into a world of exotics she could not previously have imagined.
I believe it's difficult for today's female readers (the young ones, anyway) to imagine the strictures under which women of the 50s and early 60s were expected to live - and it is against that background that Helene, Ruth, and Victoria are operating. Albert's eloquent language and dramatic narrative help make that background come alive with even more contrast to what the women discover about the world and themselves in the rarified air of Greenwich Village.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, November 24, 2003

By 

Janice Wells (Martinez, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Skirts (Hardcover)

I read Skirts several years ago and loved it. I hope this gifted writer releases a new book soon.