It's the summer of '65 in Pynch Lake, Iowa, when Evans's perceptive coming-of-age novel opens. The Wahl family are year-round residents in the summer-tourist town: Peg Wahl, a faded beauty queen, and her appropriately named husband, Brick, an alcohol-soaked lawyer who doesn't pay his bills, have always been stars in the community's small social firmament. But now their two college-age daughters are taking over center stage. Rosamund is sought out by a former suitor of Peg's, and Martie is quickly blossoming into a reckless party girl. Nearly invisible in the glare of emotional turbulence is 13-year-old Franny, the youngest Wahl daughter, who observes the world around her with an adolescent's fantasies and misconceptions. Trouble arrives in the form of reckless college freshman Ryan Marvell, who takes a romantic shine to Franny, precipitating shocked disapproval from her peers and one family disaster after another. By having Franny chart her own unique course between the examples of her two sisters (nice-girl Rosamund is discreetly boy-crazy , while Martie is more overtly rebellious), the novel goes beyond the sentimentality of a '60s era coming-of-age tale. Evans knows the language of teenage confusion well, and Franny's resiliency is appealing. Depicting the domestic chatter, tensions and emotional shifts of the Wahl family unit, Evans creates a textured portrait of one family's painful acclimation to changing sexual mores. Ryan's passionate attraction to the decidedly immature, if charming, Franny is never quite convincing, however, and without this essential credibility, the novel falls short of its potential. Agent, Lisa Bankoff. Author tour. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Franny Wahl is a precocious 13-year-old growing up in a small lake resort in Iowa. During the summer of 1965, as the vacationers return to town, Franny finds herself caught in mid-leap between childhood and adolescence, innocence and knowledge. Her two sisters, home from college and each struggling in her own way with becoming adults, spend the summer throwing booze-drenched parties. At one of the gatherings, Franny finds herself attracted to a college student; trouble ensues when the young man returns her attentions. Franny's parents aren't much help. Her mother lives in a world bounded by self-delusion, empty rituals, and meaningless cliches, while her alcoholic father resents his economic bondage to his mother. Evans has done a remarkable job in weaving a deeply colored and textured tapestry of images and emotions. Using the news, music, and television shows of the late 1960s, she effectively re-creates a specific time and place. The vividness of the setting makes the human drama all the more poignant, as various relationships bloom briefly and die prematurely. Evans has written an anthem for failed romantics. George Needham
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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