Saturday, March 9, 2013

Celestial Bodies in Orbit / Eve Littlepage


Reviewed by: BigAl

Genre: Memoir

Approximate word count: 80-85,000 words

Availability    
Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES
Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

“Eve Littlepage is a freelance writer living in Florida, happily married to an artist whom she met at a dance in 1993. She still likes to dance, though these days she prefers being clothed and barefoot to dancing naked and in high-heels.”

For more, visit Littlepage’s website.

Description:

“Eve Littlepage made her living as a striptease dancer in the suburbs of Boston for ten years, from the mid-1970s through the mid-80s, under the unlikely stage name of ‘Lisa Doolittle.’ Her memoir is about how she fell into this marginalized profession, some of the craziness that happened while she was in it, and how she struggled with, and eventually triumphed in, finding a way out and into a more wholesome life.”

Appraisal:

I’m a sucker for memoirs by people who have led lives much different than mine. Sometimes they’re entertaining and they’re almost always interesting and educational in how they help understand different people, situations, and viewpoints. On the surface, it doesn’t get much different from my life than this. Eve Littlepage’s life is one that I couldn’t have lived, even if I’d tried. Yet, despite the differences, the old adage that deep down we’re all the same always comes to mind. No matter how different your life is from someone else’s, if you can’t find lots of common ground, you aren’t trying.

Celestial Bodies in Orbit fit this pattern. It is written as if it is based on a series of interviews between Littlepage and Stella, a fictional writer. This technique gives the book a different feel at times and provides an opportunity to explore some things from a different angle or point of view, which might be hard to pull off in a typical first person narrative. However, it also led to my one minor complaint, that at times the fictional dialogue between Eve and Stella didn’t feel natural to me. Sometimes this was word choice, using words that I couldn’t picture Eve using in conversation (“indeed” was one word used multiple times in conversation with Stella, but never otherwise), and frequently addressing the other by name. How often do you use the other person’s name in an extended one on one conversation? The instances of this were relatively few, but often enough for me to take notice. Still, an interesting read and not, as some might assume, a book that will appeal to prurient tastes.

FYI:

Some adult language and situations.

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: **** Four stars

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