At its heart, GIRL TALK is about a great fear shared by many women coming of
age --- becoming our mothers. It shows how it always happens when you least
expect it and that there is no avoiding it. But most importantly, by the end
of Julianna Baggott's stunning debut novel, one has learned to accept this
fear with grace and dignity. Just like Mom would want.
Lissy Jablonski is almost 30. She is an ad executive in Manhattan.
Her first love has come to stay with her and ends up marrying her
stripper ex-roomate --- and Lissy is pregnant by her married ex-lover.
The power of these events culminates in a comic flashback to what
is known throughout the book as "the summer that never happened."
Lissy was 15 years old that summer. Her father ran off with a redheaded bank
teller, and she began to realize that everything she knew about herself and
her family was a lie. Amid a cast of vividly drawn characters, Lissy begins
to come to terms with the secrets revealed during her comforting "girl talks"
with her mother.
In an attempt to spare her daughter the humiliation of her father's moral
misstep, Dotty Jablonski takes Lissy away from her New Hampshire life to the
only refuge she can think of: the home of her rich college friend, Juniper
Fiske. The Fiske family, including children Piper and Church, are possibly
the oddest refuge for the Jablonski women during that fateful summer,
considering that Lissy's parents met at Juniper's wedding. They are the type
of rich people we all know: Piper is teenaged and sullen; Juniper,
valium-addicted and high strung; and Church is boyishly handsome and
impressionable. Perhaps the most compassionately drawn character, Church
Fiske is the kind of guy that every girl has had a crush on, the kind of guy
that stays with you years later, still holding onto the part of your heart
that believed love was easy. When Church joins Lissy and her mother at their
next refuge, his impressionable soul becomes forever wary of the life of
excess he is used to. He falls in love with everything middle class and sets
the tone for the man he will become.
It is also in the home of Dino and Ruby Pantuliano that Lissy gets to know
more about her real father, Anthony Pantuliano. A dwarfish man with a rather
impressive body, Anthony is the first --- and seemingly only --- true-love
Lissy's mother ever had. Although Anthony does not know he is her father,
Lissy becomes attached to the persona of him. She has both been raised by a
man who loves her greatly, and created as a result of a great love. The
importance of these two men in her life finds its origin during that summer
that never happened. Throughout the stay with the Soprano-like Patulianos,
Lissy begins to form the basis of what her therapist refers to as an Electra
Complex and to learn to understand why her mother is who she is.
GIRL TALK is wildly funny and benefited much in this reading by being set in
an easily identifiable era. With references to WHAM! and the explosion of the
space shuttle Challenger, it becomes easy to interpose oneself with Lissy.
Statements such as "My earliest word association with president is crook,"
make the novel both timely and timeless. We could be talking about Nixon, or
anyone for that matter.
Although the prose is not as lyrical as expected, it creates for Lissy a
strong, clear voice. The characterization is topnotch in this novel, and
although Anthony Pantuliano is drawn as less-than-perfect, the novel benefits
from his failings. Lissy's mother Dotty is at times a bit of a martyr, but
aren't all of our mothers? When you boil it all down, each of us can only
hope to become our mothers in as graceful a way as Lissy Jablonski. May we
all learn to accept the good and bad that comes with that transition, and may
we all make it a bit easier for those around us with a little "girl talk."
--- Reviewed by Josette Kurey
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