And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You is the debut novel from Kathi Kamen Goldmark, the San Francisco musician who started the Rock Bottom Remainders, the publishing-world supergroup whose members include Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Molly Ivins, and Carl Hiassen. Goldmark, formerly the group's token nonwriter, has produced a novel about Sarah Jean Pixlie, a Bay Area country singer who stumbles into stardom. The book is utterly shapeless when it comes to plot, and can be oddly uninformative about key moments of Sarah Jean's life (like, say, the birth of her child). Still, Goldmark writes with a rollicking good humor that's oddly infectious. She's like a bar band that you can't help but enjoy just because
they're having so much fun. And her passages on musical mores have an easygoing, insiderish feel. Here she writes about life on the road:
Pretty soon there were at least fifteen sweaty band and crew members sprawled on the bed, chairs, and floor. Sacks of fast-food takeout and a couple of bottles appeared. It's the truth that Wild Turkey on ice from the machine down the hall, in a hotel bathroom glass, can make you a very special kind of stupid.
The whole affair is plagued by a gimmick that quickly palls: Sarah Jean has a habit of turning her troubles into cute country-western lyrics--which are, sadly, included in the book.
--Claire Dederer
Goldmark takes an offbeat spin through the world of country music in her charming debut, which begins when backup singer Sarah Jean Pixlie gets fired by country star Cindi Lu Bender because a song Sarah Jean wrote has been nominated for an award. She heads home to the Bay Area to crash with her parents and learns that her one-night fling with a guitarist has led to a pregnancy. Goldmark alternates between family subplots and career struggles, following the attempts of Sarah Jean and her free-spirited friends to make it in the music business. Highlights include Sarah Jean's choice between the baby's father and the drummer who becomes her ambivalent new boyfriend, a winning performance at the awards show and the subsequent success of her CD and video. Meanwhile, Sarah Jean and her friends try to unravel a scam involving CD sales, orchestrated by Cindy Lu's people. A couple of the family subplots are clunkers, but a quirky, satirical edge keeps the novel from falling into rags-to-riches cliches. The combination of Goldmark's playful humor, her smooth prose style and her knowledge of the music business carry the day; despite the occasional misstep, the whole ends up exceeding the sum of its parts by a considerable margin.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Goldmark is the founder of the all-author rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders, and her contacts have netted her first novel blurbs from a dozen big-name authors (including fellow band mates Amy Tan and Dave Barry). She has chosen country-and-western music as the milieu for her fast-paced, feel-good novel featuring backup singer and songwriter Sara Jean Pixlie. Sara is on tour with one of the biggest names in country music when a novelty song she tossed off becomes a sudden hit. Bounced from the tour because of the star's huge ego, Sara winds up going home to her parents' bar in northern California, where she discovers she's pregnant. Many madcap adventures ensue involving bar band musicians, a stripper, a no-good Nashville producer, and a nutrition Nazi. Although this novel will appeal to those who like their comedy on the silly side, there is no question that the humorous highlights are the genre-tweaking songs Sara composes, including "My Baby Used to Hold Me (Now He's Putting Me on Hold)." A perfect beach read. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Goldmark is the founder of the all-author rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders, and her contacts have netted her first novel blurbs from a dozen big-name authors (including fellow band mates Amy Tan and Dave Barry). She has chosen country-and-western music as the milieu for her fast-paced, feel-good novel featuring backup singer and songwriter Sara Jean Pixlie. Sara is on tour with one of the biggest names in country music when a novelty song she tossed off becomes a sudden hit. Bounced from the tour becasue of the star's huge ego, Sara winds up going home to her parents' bar in northern California, where she discovers she's pregnant. Many madcap adventures ensue involving her bar band musicians, a stripper, a no-good Nashville producer, and a nutrition Nazi. Although this novel will appeal to those who like their comedy on the silly side, there is no question that the humorous highlights are the genre-tweaking songs Sara composes, including "My Baby Used to Hold Me (Now He's Putting Me on Hold)." A perfect beach read. -
BooklistIf you are the kind of person who has a hidden passion for Top 40 country, if you find yourself watching I Love Lucy reruns more often than you'd like to admit, if your secret desire is to live in a world where bad men are punished and your girlfriends rule and the best cure for a broken heart is to throw back your head and belt out a few bars, then Kathi Kamen Goldmark's debut novel And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You (Chronicle) is perfect for your late-summer trip to the beach.
Sarah Jean Pixlie, your curvaceous, redheaded, leopard-skin-clad heroine, will take you on an insider's tour of the country music scene, as she hits the top of the charts, has a baby, brings country music's evil empire to justice, and talks two devilishly handsome and talented musicians into bed. And all of it almost simultaneously! It's nearly as much fun guessing the identities of the thinly disguised country music stars in the book as it it anticipating the rhymes of its original songs - "My Baby Used to Hold Me (Now He's Putting Me on Hold)," "Jesus Is My Lawyer Now," and "I Got My Modem Working," to name only a few.
In Goldmark's universe, families are supportive, children are loved unequivocally, and even the men who won't marry you always come back around to be your friend. It's a place we could all stand to spend a little more time in. -O, The Oprah Magazine
Even before her first novel was published, Kathi Kamen Goldmark was a figure of some renown in the book world. The brains behind the publishing industry's supergroup the Rock Bottom Remainders, Goldmark has written tunes, escorted authors to readings, started a record company and just generally immersed herself in the worlds of books and music for years. So it's not surprising that her first novel, "And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You," is a honky-tonk celebration of family, friends and the value of a great song.
At its center is Sarah Jean Pixlie, flame-haired backup singer for country legend Cindi Lu Bender. After a night of wild sex with the new guitar guy, Sarah Jean wakes up to the news that she's been fired -- not for fraternizing with a band member but because a song she'd almost forgotten she'd recorded ("Heartaches for a Guy" -- sample line: "She made your Sunday breakfast overeasy 'stead of fried/ Well that's a lot of heartaches for a guy") has earned her a newcomer of the year nomination, and jealous Cindi Lu doesn't like competition. Brokenhearted, Sarah Jean heads home to Clear Lake and her mom's roadhouse, the Dewdrop Inn, to map out her career. When she begins to eat and sleep like there's no tomorrow, she realizes that her new life will have to accommodate a new baby as well. "And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You" is as warmhearted and fun to read as can be. If some of the characters were sent over from central casting (loving but eccentric mothers, strippers with hearts of gold, loving but eccentr
About the Author
Kathi Kamen Goldmark is a founding member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, the publishing industry's hottest band. She lives in San Francisco.
