Lesley Kagen

I think this book was written to be picked up as a made-for-TV movie. It throws so many damaged people into one small community, and adds in all the hillbilly cliches you can think of. I think it's supposed to be a tear-jerker as we identify with the narrator, a 20-year old who has lost patches of her memory and her manners during the car accident that took her parents life. She's living with her Grampa, a gruff ex-drill sergeant who loves her a lot and gives her his own version of therapy: playing scrabble & writing a local 'newspaper' to help restore her spelling and focus, hiring her to bus tables at his breakfast cafe (which keeps her interacting with others), letting her keep a dog (who turns out to be a good guardian). A racist good-ol'-boy sheriff, dump deputy, lecher, wild pregnant highschool dropout, and soft-hearted pie-baking black 'mammy' are some of the other characters.
For an author from Wisconsin to write so stereotypically about Kentucky might not set will on people from that area.… (more)

Living in rural Kentucky in the early 1970's, 20-year-old Gibby has been NQR ("not quite right") since she was involved in an accident three years previously, which killed both of her parents. With dreams of being a reporter, she now lives with her grandfather and self-publishes a gazette which she passes around to the nearby folk, giving a summary of the local happenings. When she stumbles across the dead body of Buster Malloy, she's determined to figure out what happened and establish that maybe she's not quite as NQR as everyone thinks.

Lesley Kagen is one of my under-the-radar favorite authors. My favorite of hers is still her debut, Whistling in the Dark, but I'm still working my way through her novels. I would rank this as maybe my least favorite so far, though I'm not sure why exactly. It may have been the Kentucky setting and the somewhat ridiculous plot, but she does still have a way with writing about endearing characters with unique personalities. This one didn't bring out the nostalgia of the 70's quite as much as some of her previous novels (which is partially why I love them so much), but it did incorporate some of the evolving racism of that era. And I did still enjoy this one and would recommend Kagen to anyone looking for a fresh voice in literature.… (more)