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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Elissa Schappell's first novel is so brilliant it practically gives you a suntan. Actually, it's really 10 linked stories that imply a novel, like Melissa Banks's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, only more literary. (Banks was a clever ad copywriter; Schappell is a veteran of Vanity Fair, The Paris Review, and Tin House.) Use Me tells the life story of a daddy's girl named Evelyn, from her teenage trip to France with her parents and kid sister, through her wild youth and her dad's long battle with cancer, right up to her metamorphosis into a mother of a 2-year-old son who adores vintage punk rock and is slow to give up nursing.
Schappell has a gift for alert first-person narrative, sardonic humor, nuanced sex scenes, child characters as lifelike as (and less sentimental than) Salinger's, and tense conversations that quiver like crossed fencing foils. The book is rife with piercing insights and illuminating turns of phrase. Peering into a loved one's urn, the orally oriented Evie observes that "the bits of burned white bone look like miniature marshmallows in pale cocoa." Her stressed-out mom "looks as breakable as a dime-store comb." A 16-year-old Catholic schoolgirl awaiting her third abortion notices the clinic's "bus-station furniture designed to cause discomfort," the "disco effect" of a flickering fluorescent tube overhead, and inside the light, the "dead flies, all on their backs, legs up and crossed."
The schoolgirl is Evie's best friend, Mary Beth, who narrates Schappell's second-best story, "Novice Bitch," which concerns Mary Beth's post-abortion bonding experience with her mom at a traumatizing dog show. It's poignant and painful--Schappell's favorite emotional cocktail. Mary Beth also comes alive in "The Garden of Eden," which evokes the girls' boho idyll in Amsterdam. But for most of the book, she is sketchy, and little exists beyond the struggles of Evie, her doting and imperiled father, and her lovingly troublesome mother. Evie's husband, sister, and the odd lover are fine as far as they go, which isn't far. There's supposed to be an ongoing subtext about Mary Beth's rivalry for Evie's dad's affections--Mary Beth's father is emotionally AWOL with increasingly younger wives--but Schappell doesn't pull it off. She's better at contrasting the girls' erotic strategies: Mary Beth goes for it, while "Evie thinks it perfectly acceptable to get completely naked with a man and then say, 'Oh, let's just kiss.'"
Two things in Use Me stick with you: the deadly accuracy of the family grief scenes and the enchanted account of Evie's (and Mary Beth's) adolescence. Despite a few flaws, this is an electrifying debut. Elissa Schappell is the genuine article. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
At the center of Schappell's first novel, which consists of 10 interconnected stories, is Evie Wakefield and her journey from passionate adolescence to marriage and children. Along for the ride is Evie's troubled best friend, Mary Beth McEvoy, who almost steals the novel with her own story, "Novice Bitch." Evie's relationships with men--her father, her boyfriends, and finally her husband and son--drive the action. Schappell broadens her scope with an examination of Evie's family life during her father's fight with cancer. The adolescent Evie and Mary Beth are much more interesting than their adult counterparts. Schappell does well in showing the sexual yearnings and desires of the two girls, but as they grow into womanhood, the characters fall into a rut that Schappell can't get them out of. This novel's independent short stories are like snapshots in a photo album that come together to reveal the stages of a life, gaps and unexpected leaps included. Michelle Kaske
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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› Visit Amazon's Elissa Schappell Page
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
"Pouilly-Fume, Chardonnay, Pouilly-Fuisse, Sancerre." I chant my mantra in the backseat of our white rental car, Josephine, as we speed through the Loire Valley countryside, past chateaus and vineyards and endless rows of grapevines. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mary Beth, Sister Corrina, Michael Morris, Mother Saint Agnes, Pear William, Sister Cortina, Blue Mountain, North Star, Hail Mary, Mother Superior, Red Light, Seven Plagues, Sisters of Saint Genevieve New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
"Pouilly-Fume, Chardonnay, Pouilly-Fuisse, Sancerre." I chant my mantra in the backseat of our white rental car, Josephine, as we speed through the Loire Valley countryside, past chateaus and vineyards and endless rows of grapevines. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mary Beth, Sister Corrina, Michael Morris, Mother Saint Agnes, Pear William, Sister Cortina, Blue Mountain, North Star, Hail Mary, Mother Superior, Red Light, Seven Plagues, Sisters of Saint Genevieve New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 5
books:
- How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto in Front Matter
- The Life and Loves of a She Devil by Fay Weldon in Front Matter
- Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories by Amy Hempel in Front Matter
- Preston Falls: A Novel by David Gates in Front Matter
- The Ice Storm: A Novel by Rick Moody in Front Matter
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98% buy the item featured on this page: Use Me: Fiction $13.00 |
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1% buy The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing $13.31 |
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1% buy Jewel (Avon Historical Romance) $5.99 |
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