Genre: Women’s
Fiction
Description:
"Everyone’s got personal baggage,
but Rusty Scanlon thinks she’s carrying more than her fair share. Owner of a
trendy boutique in the outskirts of New York City, Rusty has an eye for fashion
and a gift for messing up her love life. She doesn’t trust men. They’ve all
abandoned her – the first being her carpenter father, who ran out
on her and her mother when she was only six years old.
When she meets Walter Margolis, a guy who
adores her, she thinks she has it all. Not so, she discovers when she tells him
she’s pregnant and he suggests a paternity test. Rusty doesn’t know what to
make of Walter’s reaction until he reveals the details of the accident he
thinks he caused as a teenager, and the guilt that has tormented him all his
adult life.
Rusty’s emotional rollercoaster ride is
full of twists and turns that teach her and those around her about losing love
and finding it, and what it means to be a family."
Author:
"Rita Plush is a writer, interior designer, and
instructor of the decorative arts. She lives in Queens, New York. Her short
stories have appeared in the Alaska
Quarterly Review, Iconoclast, Passager, The MacGuffin, and others. She is the author of the novel Lily Steps Out, and a short-story
collection titled Alterations.”
For more information, visit Ms Plush’s website.
Appraisal:
This is a gentle story gently told about a girl, Rusty Scanlon, whose
father left her when she was six. This fact has informed her whole life so far.
Rusty is successful; she owns a fashionable boutique in New York and loves her
work. We meet her when she discovers she is pregnant - and delighted - as she
loves the baby's father, Walter Margolis.
“A baby,”
she whispers to the silent tiled room. “I’m going to have a baby.” She peers
down and leans over, getting her face as close as possible to her belly and
gives the air a little kiss."
The fact that she is pregnant makes her think and wonder about her
father; she has always missed him and remembers him quite well, even though she
was so young. Why had he left her, and her mother, Nadine?
The characters in this book are well drawn; Nadine is very much her
own self - stylish and attractive, a yoga teacher who does her best to get on
with her daughter. Their relationship is complex but loving.
Walter is an odd person with his own individual way of speaking; he is
a serious man who considers every situation with slow deliberation, especially
the fact that he is going to be a father. He has his own unhappy memories from
childhood which make him wary and a bit withdrawn but he does love Rusty.
The book is written in sections; from different points of view, and
from past and present circumstances. This is always a good thing in a book - it
breaks up the action and fills out the whole story.
Rusty decides to find her father, Jack Paul, just about the same time
he decides to find her. He gets a temporary job, teaching woodwork to teenage
boys and discovers that he really enjoys it, and that he is very good at it.
Not only
does he take pride in their achievements, but when their mitered,
mahogany-stained picture frames, and their hinged boxes are chosen for display
in the showcase of the high school lobby with ‘Instructor: Jack Paul Scanlon,’ printed
a little placard resting on a shelf in the case, he practically wears out the
rubber on his Adidas tennis shoes, finding excuses to walk by and admire their
work. I taught them that, he’d say to himself. I taught them that.
On the negative side the title Feminine
Products seems a little strange. One immediately thinks of shampoos and
perfumes and skin creams and it doesn't appear to have any connection to the
story at all.
There are long passages in the book which could be lifted out
altogether without disturbing the flow of the story; with a bit of tweaking
they would make good short stories, particularly parts involving Jack Paul.
Overall the book is very enjoyable but because of the title and those
long passages I am deducting one star.
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues
Rating:
Four stars ****
Reviewed
by: Joan Slowey
Approximate
word count: 85-90,000 words
1 comment:
That title is way weird. I thought the book had to be about tampons, etc.
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