4.5 for bellbottoms and Beatles--but oh so much more!!What a great surprise! I thought I was signing up for some nice-and-light chick lit, but oh, was I ever wrong! We follow two sisters, Jo and Bethie, from childhood to seniorhood. Their lives are anything but nice and light, and I got pulled in immediately. There’s drama coming out their ears, yet it’s not gratuitious, overdone, or unrealistic. Weiner, who I’ve always thought was a good writer but definitely on the light side, created a more s 4.5 for bellbottoms and Beatles--but oh so much more!!What a great surprise! I thought I was signing up for some nice-and-light chick lit, but oh, was I ever wrong! We follow two sisters, Jo and Bethie, from childhood to seniorhood. Their lives are anything but nice and light, and I got pulled in immediately. There’s drama coming out their ears, yet it’s not gratuitious, overdone, or unrealistic. Weiner, who I’ve always thought was a good writer but definitely on the light side, created a more serious and expansive story here (which was her plan, as she says in the Intro). Her storytelling chops are on full display. The plot is well paced and nearly flawless. And it’s juicily unpredictable; I loved having no idea what was going to happen next and getting slapped in the face with some dramatic, unexpected turn of events. The characters are complex and vivid, and they pressed my emote button. I even cried once!—and I’m not a crying kind of reader. Although the language isn’t jazzy, I liked how clear and smooth it is—not pretentious or convoluted. And her descriptions, they’re something else! Women baby boomers, you MUST read this book! Down memory lane we go! And if you were in the counter-culture (especially if were wild and crazy), you will really get your mind blown. Weiner has the 1960s and 1970s down pat; I was transported! Remember putting your pajamas under the pillow when you made the bed? Remember the deep pink indentations that your garter do-hickies made on your thighs? Does Metrecal ring a bell? All these images (and hundreds more) from a long-ago past are apparently stored on the hard drive inside my skull, and it was a kick to make them dance. I had no idea they were still up there in the old noggin’, just waiting to be reactivated! And of course, the images stirred up memories and that was when I’d daydream for a bit, taking little side trips of my own. (Maybe some of our senior ADD happens because we get distracted by our memories?) Weiner really did her homework; she’s not a baby boomer herself. You’d think she was, based on how well she understands that time period. I’m betting her mom was the key source, as Weiner mentions her in the Intro and it seems that the story is loosely based on her life.So yes, the descriptions are out of this world. I usually whine relentlessly about writers’ detail-itis, but here, I’m not poo-pahing it one bit. I was glued to the page. I couldn’t take my eyes off any of it—the clothes, the rooms, the colors, all the spot-on pop-culture references. Weiner is one of those excellent writers who makes you feel like you’re watching a movie. Usually, a writer talking about the color of bellbottoms would annoy the hell out of me. Here, I appreciated being able to see the movie in technicolor. (I’d love it if they took this story to the big screen. They’ve made one of Weiner’s books, In Her Shoes, into a blockbuster movie, so maybe it will happen again.)So it was the first third of the book, where Jo and Bethie were kids and teens in the 60s and 70s, that made me crazy happy. I was hopping around on my pogo stick while wearing my bellbottoms and holding a transistor radio blasting the Beatles’ “We All Live in a Yellow Submarine.” (Pretty impressive that I can hold a radio while hopping on the pogo stick, huh?) I couldn’t stop talking about the book; it was magical. I give that part of the book 10 stars, hands down. Don’t’ worry, I’m not saying that the rest of the book was bigtime inferior; it just wasn’t as intense, and I didn’t have the memory game going so much. I still loved it. But there was one thing that kept me from giving the book 5 stars, and it’s that the women’s lib part was too pushy. I don’t think the book needs an agenda. Sexual abuse was a topic, and Weiner handled those scenes expertly—and they got my dander up like they were supposed to. But there was a consciousness-raising scene in the early part of the book that I found embarrassing—way too cliched. I know Weiner was going for authentic, and authentic it was (women really did attend official consciousness-raising meetings). I just was bored and annoyed reading it. She could have left out the dialogue, which in its rhetoric seemed sophomoric. Later in the book, there’s more sexual politics, and it felt a little male-bashy—not terribly so, but I didn’t like it.It was so exciting to take this long journey with the two sisters and to watch their internal turmoil. I liked how realistic the book was, and I enjoyed their complex and intense relationship. Some of their choices made me cringe, others made me sad—oh please don’t do THAT! Do you really think that’s a good idea? Don’t you see you’re messing up?! Only a great writer can make me get so wound up about characters in a book! They’re not real people, Debbie, take it easy! She also made me shut my mouth and not rail against angsty teens. You won’t hear a peep from me this time, even though there was ample angst. Maybe it’s because she made Jo and Bethie so likeable. And their angst seemed so real and justified and understandable.There’s probably something in the book that every female can relate to—I found several things, including living with a hyper-critical mom. And of course, I identified with some of the unsavory choices made during the hippie days. And the kind of bizarro scenes that you’re thrown into, and which catch you off guard and leave you speechless and sometimes traumatized. There was at least one harrowing scene that had me by the throat and will stay with me a long time. It reminded me of the trouble you can get in when you make bad decisions in your early 20s (before your prefrontal cortex is fully developed).There were a couple of super minor things that should have been resolved and a couple things that didn’t ring true. (For example, a character paid their bills when they went bankrupt, even though bankruptcy means you don’t have to pay your bills.) Oh, and I ran across a joke that I recently heard Jay Leno make! The writer should have referenced it as a public joke; instead, I felt Weiner was trying to pass it off as an original funny. But we’re talking picky picky picky here. This was one satisfying read.I’m surprised that this book isn’t touted as an LGBT book, as Jo is gay. The beginning of the book chronicles her trying to come to terms with her budding sexuality; it was so well done and very intense. I really got a feel for how insanely difficult being a lesbian in the 60s and 70s would have been.Also depicted: life in a Jewish family, sexual abuse (and its aftermath), weight issues, drugs, the good and bad of the free-love days. It made me think about the death of dreams, what people want versus what they settle for, the wandering lost souls of the young, the price of bad decisions, the loss of innocence, longing, discontent, internal conflicts.What a book! I’m still reeling and it has been a while since I finished it. Definitely a favorite book of 2019! Grab it when it is published in June.Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy.
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