Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2011
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
This lively, intricately plotted, laugh-out-loud funny, and surprisingly touching family drama combines the wit of Carl Hiaasen with the southern charm of Jill McCorkle.
Seventy-seven-year-old Marylou Ahearn is going to kill Dr. Wilson Spriggs come hell or high water. In 1953, he gave her a radioactive cocktail without her consent as part of a secret government study that had horrible consequences.
Marylou has been plotting her revenge for fifty years. When she accidentally discovers his whereabouts in Florida, her plans finally snap into action. She high tails it to hot and humid Tallahassee, moves in down the block from where a now senile Spriggs lives with his daughter’s family, and begins the tricky work of insinuating herself into their lives. But she has no idea what a nest of yellow jackets she is stumbling into.
Before the novel is through, someone will be kidnapped, an unlikely couple will get engaged, someone will nearly die from eating a pineapple upside-down cake laced with anti-freeze, and that’s not all ...
Told from the varied perspectives of an incredible cast of endearing oddball characters and written with the flair of a native Floridian, this dark comedy does not disappoint.
"Starred Review. Glowing with dark humor ... [a] fabulously quirky second novel." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Mixing the suburban angst of Tom Perrotta with the snarky humor of Carl Hiaasen, Stuckey-French has written a page-turner that is thoughtful, amusing, and nearly impossible to put down." - Library Journal
"It's impossible not to love a novel that starts out with a 77-year-old woman planning cold-blooded murder, especially when the old lady in question is as charming and funny as Stuckey-French's Marylou Ahearn. As she steadily worms her way into the world and family of her intended victim, this fast-paced and witty book expands to create a big-hearted, hilarious and touching portrait of a community full of an amazing and vivid cast of characters. A true pleasure to read." - Dan Chaon, bestselling author of Await Your Reply.
"An often hilarious, always entertaining novel, but Elizabeth Stuckey-French has achieved much more. With remarkable wisdom and empathy, she has given us a profound meditation on what it means to be a family and the human heart’s complex, sidling path toward forgiveness." - Ron Rash, bestselling author of Serena and One Foot in Eden
"How wonderful it is to find a writer who perfectly captures the spirit of this crazy age: that bizarre and irreducible mix of high and low culture, of tragedy and comedy. This is no mean literary feat. And Elizabeth Stuckey-French achieves it brilliantly. Not only a wildly entertaining novel, an important one." - Robert Olen Bulter, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Hell and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
"If revenge is a dish best served cold, then Marylou Ahearn is serving up ice cream ... A dark, humorous portrait of a dysfunctional modern family." - Kirkus Reviews
"[A] heartfelt, absurdist satire." - Booklist
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This information about The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Marion Ettlinger
Elizabeth Stuckey-French is the author of two novels, The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady and Mermaids on the Moon, as well as a collection of short stories, The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa. She is a co-author, along with Janet Burroway and Ned Stuckey-French, of Writing Fiction: A Guide to the Narrative Craft.
She teaches fiction writing at Florida State University.
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