Leslie PietrzykReseñas

A bold novel. This novel is about a girl (never named) from a working class family in Iowa City and her years at a big Chicago university filled with the connected and the well-to-do, and how she navigates this uneasy journey in the early 1980s with the Tylenol scare in the background, with drinking and sex, and most interesting to me, class divides been the very wealthy and the just getting by. I loved this unnamed narrator at the center of SILVER GIRL. I loved how the story moves from Chicago to Iowa City, to her immediate turbulent passed of out-of-work guitar-playing uncles/predators to brutal fathers and Virginia Slims-smoking mother and her angelic sister, Grace (maybe my only criticism—Grace is too good and named Grace)—and then moves back to campus—to her simmering friendship with her wealthy roommate Jess, to her knowing obsession with Jess’s fiancé. Some chapters are very short, flash fiction almost, and others feel like short stories unto themselves. This is a novel that writer should read closely for the language deftly turns from beautiful to beautifully brutal. This is also a novel about female friendships, and even more so, about love between sisters. I would wholly recommend this novel to book clubs because it seems like we’ve all been there—unsure and sure of ourselves at the same time, ‘silver girls.’ While the first person narrator is never named, I feel I know her. I have been her. Read.

Four generations of women, beginning with Rose, a Polish immigrant, and ending with her great-granddaughter, Amy, explore how to relate to one another and to their common ancestry; how to hold on to the past, and how to let it go. We know there are men in these women's lives, but as in the second generation's orderly American homes, they are always in another room somewhere. This isn't their story. The viewpoint changes from one woman to another as the novel proceeds; most of the time this works very well, but occasionally, especially at the beginning, it was difficult to remember which voice I was listening to. One section where Amy, on holiday from her job teaching English in Bangkok, struck out alone on a sightseeing jaunt seemed glaringly out of synch with the rest of the novel, although it could easily stand alone as a very effective short story.

The story of the close knit Marchewska women beginning with Rose emigrating from Poland to Detroit in 1919 and bearing 4 daughters. Her mother dies soon after her departure, and in her grief she creates and enforces an environment of dependence and loyalty to family that holds firm for years. The families grow larger; living in the same neighborhood, seeing each other every day, shopping together. And the women spend hours in their kitchens preparing, cooking, canning and baking all year long.

It is Helen's daughter, Ginger, who breaks the mold and escapes what she feels is an overbearing, stifling and racist family environment in which everyone is expected to think the same way, do the same, day in and out. She moves to Phoenix and remains there returning only to visit every summer with her children. But her feelings of guilt for abandoning her mother and family is a high price to pay for freedom.

A good read about a strong family dynamic with women who are there for each other but who cannot understand or accept change.

It was interesting reading about the Polish culture. Did not have any knowledge of that cultural before reading the book. It was a good book .

This is a wonderful story of a 15 year old girl who loses her mother, and spends a year questioning why, all the while hearing her mother's voice speaking to her, coaching her, teaching her, and telling her things that she did not know when her mother was alive.

Alice Martin is a typical teenager...hanging out with friends, having crushes on boys, and cherishes the times that she spends with her mom. Her mother, however, occasionally falls into deep depressions, and it was during one of these spells, that she kills herself. Alice, her 17 year old brother Will, and her Aunt Aggy struggle to find the answers why Annette Martin decided to do what she did.

Alice knows that nothing will ever be the same again, and wrestles with the fact that her mom is gone forever, and there are a lot of unanswered questions. When she begins hearing her dead mother's voice in her thoughts, she is not even afraid. Her mother's voice stays with her for a year and a day, answering many of Alice's questions.

This is moving coming-of-age story with a beautiful ending.

Citaat: 'Mama kwam drie dagen na haar begrafenis terug.Mijn moeder dus, zo symbolies als maar kon. Na drie dagen, alsof ze Jezus christus was. 'Alice', fluisterde ze toen ik pannenkoeken stond te bakken en wachtte tot de luchtbellen verdweneen zodat ik ze kon omdraairen.'Ik ben het, mama, ik ben terug.' Ik reikte vreemd kalm naar de spatel. Ik had in dokter Spoch het stuk gelezen over hoe kinderen met de dood van een ouder omgaan. Oké, ik was dan vijftien, geen kind meer maar informatie is informatie. Hij zei niets over stemmen. Gebeurde dit echt? Ze zei: 'de siroop brandt aan alsje het gas zo hoog zet.'½

Very good book about 4 generations of Polish women.