Playing Botticelli: Summary and book reviews of Playing Botticelli by Liza Nelson, plus links to an excerpt from Playing Botticelli and a biography of Liza Nelson.
Playing Botticelli
by Liza Nelson
Hardcover: Jan 2000,
288 pages.
Paperback: Jan 2001,
288 pages.
In her vibrant and wise novel, Liza Nelson captures that pivotal time when a parent's power to shape and shield her child is drawing to an end.
The year is 1986, when airport terrorism, serial killers, and Iran-Contra have put most of the population into a collective funk. But artist Godiva Blue feels safe. A refugee from the late sixties, self-proclaimed visionary, and "lady janitor" at the local elementary school, Godiva believes she has found a haven for herself and her daughter, Dylan, in the backwaters of northwest Florida. Then, on a casual trip to the post office, Godiva glances at the FBI most-wanted poster and recognizes the face of the man with whom she conceived Dylan during an antiwar rally. Meanwhile, at fifteen Dylan is chafing under her mother's overwhelming personality. When she discovers the poster that Godiva had hidden in a rare moment of self-doubt, Dylan begins to build a fantasy future centered on reuniting with her father, setting her--and Godiva's--course.
Library Journal
The major problem with this first novel is that Nelson can't quite make up her mind whether the plot centers on a child's search for her father or the generation gap between a hippie mother and her more conservative daughter.
Publishers Weekly
The fertile depths of mother-daughter relationships are plumbed with sparkling humor and sharp-edged wisdom in Nelson's impressive debut.
Kirkus Reviews
A rambling and good-natured debut novel that follows a young woman as she takes to the road in search of the father she never knew. Adolescence is a tough time for just about everybody, but when your mother is an ex-flower child who conceived you on a commune, you're going to suffer an extra complex or two.... Can a daughter's love defeat history? Sharp, likable, and nicely paced, Nelson writes with a light touch and a sharp eye.
Pat Conroy
Playing Botticelli is one of those wonderful novels that treat the mother-daughter relationship for what it is part mine field, part love nest.
Anne Lamott
Liza Nelson is a terrific writer, and these are wonderful characters.
Pam Durban
A tough, tender, and unabashed meditation on the joys and dangers of motherhood and the longings of a daughter for her father. Elegant, moving, and true.
Smart and poignant, charming and witty this is a wonderful debut novel, a mother-daughter story that proves it's always those who give you the most trouble that end up getting access to the purest part of your heart.
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Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
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Library Journal
Pat Conroy
