Customer Reviews

A Ticket to Ride: A Novel (P.S.)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This novel is a treasure -- it simultaneously captures the hopefulness of a coconut-scented summer's day and the loneliness of a girl who yearns for female intimacy. Who hasn't been there? McLain's descriptions of Jamie's internal and external worlds bring it all back.

Having read all of McLain's poetry and her memoir, her new novel is no surprise. The writing is sensual and heartbreaking, the study of character honest and deep. The secrets that connect Jamie and her uncle will haunt you just as they do their characters.

If you liked Dorothy Allison's Ruth Anne in [...] out of NC or Carson McCullers's Frankie in The Member of the Wedding or Marilyn Robinson's Ruth in Housekeeping, then you'll like Paula McLain's Jamie in A Ticket to Ride.

Read this novel & then go back and read McLain's other work. You won't be sorry.

An adolescent friendship forms the core of this remarkable and beautifully written novel where emotions end up colliding in a maelstrom of guilt and betrayal. At its heart A Ticket to Ride is a love story between a niece and her uncle and between a brother and his younger sister as it charts the fertile territory of family bonds and shows how rampant loyalty can sometimes have devastating consequences.

It is the summer of 1973 and the young Jamie feels an unsteady mixture of delight and hesitance when her uncle Raymond tells her that her older cousin Fawn Delacorte will be flying in from Phoenix and staying with them both for summer at their home in Moline, Illinois. Raymond doesn't elaborate on the reasons Fawn will be staying only to say that according to Fawn's mother Camille, the girl is currently "at loose ends' and a companion for the season is certainly something that could be of benefit to both girls.

Shy and diffident, Jamie considers herself "the tragic girl," the one who keeps her asthma inhaler in her lunch box, who reads to much and who spends too much time alone. So she doesn't know quite what to make of Fawn when Raymond and Jamie pick Fawn up from O'Hare International Airport and she suddenly appears at the arrival gate, looking crisp and shiny, a type of magic potion, and a walking and talking human elixir.

The friendship begins with a present of a purse, "breath-mint white, the size of an apple with a long leather strap," the object in stark contrast to Jamie's dowdy denim jumper with fat plastic buttons, and her suntan pantyhose pooling at her knees. But Jamie senses promise here and in the days after Fawn's arrival nothing and everything happens. Clearly Jamie wants Fawn to become her best and most treasured friend with all the ferocity that she can muster.

This older, glamorous girl is someone whom Jamie can talk to for the first time in years. Their days filled with music and television as Jamie finds herself dressing for Fawn's approval, parting her hair the way Fawn instructs as they read magazines together, and sunbathing on the side of the house, talking until late at night, Fawn totally free with her forbidden secrets. Fawn seems so certain of herself and the world at large that Jamie just feels relieved to be guided by her, trusting Fawn's sense of things.

Meanwhile, Raymond has his own story to tell. Eight years earlier, he reflects on his troubled sister Suzette, the mother of Jamie. A damaged and insecure soul, Suzette spent much of her short life running from the ridiculous choices she made and the willing self-destructiveness that mired much of her life. Over the years Raymond has had to do battle with the endless boyfriends, the bankruptcies, and the Dexedrine that has kept her thin and brutally optimistic: "the girl's such trouble" remarks Raymond's best friend Leon, more than once.

A bad news, high-risk, and hard luck case, Raymond can never just walk away from his beloved sister, even after all the mistakes, "it wasn't easy to go on caring about Suzette, but sometimes love wasn't easy." But now, with Jamie finally entrusted to his care, and Fawn leading her astray the images of Suzette's hardscrabble life are beginning to manifest itself in her daughter. Certainly for Jamie, the images of her mother constantly loom onto the horizon "like a cloud of worry or dread or longing."

When a drunken joyride to Chicago goes terribly wrong and a school friend of Jamie's goes missing, Jamie's friendship with Fawn is finally tested to the maximum. Like her mother before her, things come pretty far and pretty fast with all of the boys and the drinking and the hanging out with the local rock bands. Fawn continually manipulates Jamie's sense of power, knowing exactly what she needs to do to get what she wants in every instance; "like a dazzling and terrifying spider, she never backs down."

In truly spectacular prose, author Paula McLain beautifully juxtaposes the lives of both this mother and daughter, and of course the brother who tries with all his heart to help. Suzette tumbles from one radioactive ex-boyfriend to another, seemingly drawn to them in an almost pathological way, while over the years Raymond tries to rescue her again and again from her transient life of terrible mistakes and missed opportunities.

The bonds of family eventually propel this exquisite novel, Jamie's assignation with Fawn remaining at the center along with her desperate need to connect and to feel better about herself and her place in the world. She both loves and hates Fawn, enamored with her surly self-confidence, yet also blindsided by sharp-edged vanity and selfishness. Just like two sides of the same coin, Fawn ends up challenging Jamie's best intentions as her friend and her partner in crime, and what she thinks is best for her new found friend. Mike Leonard January 08.

It's gorgeously written, so I was somewhat surprised that I didn't love A Ticket to Ride. The main reason was the going back and forth between the present and the past, which I found distracting - just when I was beginning to get involved in Jamie's and Fawn's story, the novel took me back years, to find out about Suzette. And while the end made it clear why this narrative device was necessary, it didn't make it any more engaging.

Jamie lives with her Uncle Raymond because her mother Suzette left home and has always been a sort of wild child always on the go and never looking back. Jamie is a shy outcast, new in town, out of place, with no sense of belonging. And then her cousin Fawn shows up to stay with them. Fawn is gorgeous and mature, oozes confidence, and loves to flirt. She slowly pulls Jamie out of her shell one summer in the 70s as the two become friends.

There are two stories here, alternating throughout the book. We have the past where Raymond tries to find his sister and offer her protection, and then we have the present which follows Fawn and Jamie and their mischeivious friendship. Each is delicate in its own way, and also somewhat mirrors the other as your read further along.

I found the characters to be well developed and each full of mystery in a way and oh so fragile. I was so anxious to see where their conflicts would take them. This is a nice slow coming-of-age story which is, more than anything, meant to be admired for the writing itself. As the story builds to its climax, we find ourselves with less than 50 pages to read, but the journey there was both heartfelt and meaningful.

This book is about loss, and about friendships we often have as teens despite our parents warning us about that "bad kid" from around the block. It's about music, shag carpet, baby oil tans, and TV shows that definied a generation. It's about connections that we long for as human beings whether it be from a relative or just a good close friend. It's about sneaking out on a Friday night and going somehwere you aren't supposed to.

I would consider this book to be almost a teen reading level, and even targeted more toward girls, but as a man in my 30s I really did fall in love with McLain's style and thought this was a good book. What it lacked in action or in its climax, it certainly made up for in imagery and style.

In the long hot summer of 1973, two young teenage girls push the boundaries, hoping to experience whatever it will take to make them cool, sexy, and happy.

For Jamie, the exploration is about a motherless girl searching for approval and acceptance, which is why she is so willing to follow the lead of her cousin Fawn, who has ended up in Moline, Illinois because she is trouble personified. Fawn's version of the events that brought her to Illinois casts her in the most positive light possible. And to Jamie, who has been shunted back and forth between relatives after her mother Suzette took off one day years before, Fawn's behavior may send up red flags, but she is ill-equipped to interpret the signs.

A Ticket to Ride: A Novel (P.S.) alternates between Jamie's point of view and her Uncle Raymond's, and as we follow the story arcs of the two characters, the picture fills in and presents the full story. Each chapter is titled with songs from the era, and sometimes, I could almost hear the music lilting in the background.

As the summer draws to a close, these two young girls seeking excitement have stumbled upon a whole world of trouble and tragedy.

As Jamie is trying to sort out and understand what has happened, she and her uncle finally sit down to talk, and in a few moments of soul-searching honesty, Jamie learns the whole saga about her mother and what happened so long ago. Examining the realities of the past and revisiting the moments of one hot summer full of errors in judgment, Jamie will finally begin to discover her place and her identity.

The characters are multilayered, with all the facets of real people trying to make sense of their lives, the choices they've made, and the possibilities that are left for them. Four stars for an insightful story that, while it may not be for everyone, is a relevant coming-of-age tale set during a unique time in history.

Summary, no spoilers.

This story takes place primarily in the summer of 1973, and the location is Moline, Illinois. Our 15 year old protagonist Jamie lives with her uncle Raymond. Jamie was raised in Bakersfield by her grandparents, but when the grandmother got ill, Jamie was taken in by Raymond. We know that Jamie's mother was named Suzette and that she basically abandoned Jamie when Jamie was a baby, although she did appear briefly in her life after that. Jamie has fantasized about Suzette and hopes that someday her mother will come to reclaim her. She especially was hoping this would happen when the grandmother fell ill. But Suzette did not appear.

At the beginning of this summer in 1973, Jamie's wild child cousin Fawn, aged 16, comes to live with her and Raymond. We know that Fawn was sent to live in Moline as some sort of punishment for some misbehavior at home, but Fawn's version of events comes into dispute later on in the story. What we do know is that Fawn is beautiful, manipulative, and determined to have a good time.

Plain Jamie becomes enamored with Fawn and her lifestyle, and lets Fawn influence her in both the way she looks and the way she behaves. The problem of course is that Fawn is a selfish, troubled girl, who doesn't really care about anyone else.

We know from the get-go that there is a bad ending to this summer in Moline. We don't know what it is, but the author does a good job of foreshadowing the tragedy. And the denouement is stunning and affecting - I was not expecting it.

Add to all this narrative chapters that take place years earlier, when Raymond is driving out to take care of his younger sister Suzette. We know that Suzette is a mess, and makes poor choices in life to say the least. We also know that Raymond has an almost unnatural devotion to Suzette, and that he feels it is his responsibility to keep saving her. It is at the end of the chapters that cover this period of time that we find out what happened to Suzette.

All in all, I thought this was an interesting book, yet in criticism it just wasn't the page-turner I thought it would be. In fact, I had to struggle a bit to keep reading this book. Once I got towards the end I enjoyed it more, and as I said earlier, the ending really is terrific. But the journey towards that ending just didn't work well for me, and there were times I almost stopped reading. I love books from this time period, so I was surprised I didn't love this more.

I would recommend picking the book up and reading the first few chapters. There really are indicative of the flow and style of the book and you can get an idea if this book is for you.

Meant to add - one of the fun things about this book is that all chapters are titled after lyrics (a line or two) from popular songs from the 1960s and 1970s. I had fun trying to remember the songs (missed a couple), and thought it was a clever way of describing chapter contents and relating them to the time period.

Just finished Mclain's novel and am still haunted by it. Couldn't put it down from start to finish. Excellent read.

I've never read this author's work before and might have tired of the story without her exquisite writing. The writing is not just beautiful, but so specific and intentional and effective. At the end of it all I was haunted by the questions raised, which in my mind centered around the forgivability of horrible human behavior.

I thought this was a great book! And an acquaintance who read it said "boy, McLain really knows how to get into the head of an adolescent!" That is certainly true - but Ticket to Ride is no teen-age novel. Poetic writing and fast action highlight a timeless tale of the choices we make for the wrong reasons - love, a need to belong, and misplaced loyalty. This is a carefully constructed story of two intertwined relationships that builds suspense gradually to a dynamite ending that keeps you on edge till the last sentence.

I cried both times I came to the achingly sad and hopeful end of Paula McLain's book, where all the beautiful threads of desire and loss, spun out in her lyric voice, were woven together in the simple sentence, "Was there anything sadder than starting your life?" Her characters make my heart ache, for they represent so deeply what is flawed and ragged about all of us.