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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 2002, 224 pages
Paperback:
Jul 2003, 224 pages
In this funny, sad and somehow good natured book Jean Harfenist explores the interface between love and dysfunction through young Lillian whose voice will stick with you long after you turn the last page.
Lillian Anderson is a strong-minded, backwoods-Minnesota girl, well-versed in the basics of survival. She can find air to breathe under a capsized boat, drive in a blizzard, or capture a wild duck. As part of a large struggling family, she tiptoes around her explosive father whose best days always come right after he’s poached something and her neurotically optimistic mother whose bursts of vigor bring added chaos. Lillian barrels through adolescence with no illusions about her future, honing her clerical skills while working the nightshift as a salad girl in the airport kitchen. Just as she’s on her feet and moving out, their house is literally sinking into the marsh. Stunningly honest, this story explores the fierce love that binds family together.
Floating
Mom says, "Now this is how it's supposed to be." She smiles her sparkly smile and looks around the breakfast table at all of us while the breeze off the lake comes through the screens and the red squirrels chitter in the oak trees. Our living and dining room are one big square with golden knotty-pine paneling and a high-beamed ceiling. Dad built it that way. Then he nailed deer heads and rifle racks to the walls and named it Jack's Hunting Lodge. But Mom put a sign out by the road with just our name next to a mallard hen: ANDERSON.
Randy always sits next to me. I kick his bare foot and nod at Dad who's jabbing his sliced bananas with his fork, click-click, click-click against the Melmac bowl. Randy raises his sun-bleached eyebrows at me, which means just let it go, but Mitzy jumps to her feet, points her skinny finger in Dad's face and says, "Mom says it sets her teeth on edge when you do that." I'll be eight this month, Mitzy's nearly ten and Randy...
Kaye Gibbons
Rigorously beautiful without an ounce of dangerous pretension, a book I’ll put on my book club’s list and keep by the bed for dark nights when I need a language booster shot. Richard Russo
Reading Jean Harfenist’s [writing] is like finding a hot slot machine in a casino. One winner after another? In wild defiance of the odds? Who cares. Stay seated.
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