March 9, 2009
Coyne's compelling debut shines an unnerving light on the fallout from a childhood rooted in abuse. Alexandra “Cat” Rucker, an alcoholic strip club cocktail waitress, returns to her childhood home after her mother kills herself. She's been gone 10 years and is now uncomfortable around her brother, Jared, and sister, Wendy; while confronting her past, she also tries to discern the meaning of her mother's suicide note: “He isn't who you think he is.” Alternating between the complicated present and the horrific past, Coyne portrays the myriad ways family members cope with abuse. Cat's mother lived in a world of her own; Cat, the oldest, bore the brunt of her father's attacks; Jared buried himself in school sports, occasionally coming to his sister's defense when it was safe to do so; and Wendy focused on being the perfect daughter. Then there's Addison Watkins, the son of a family friend who at once offered a haven and a challenge to teenage Cat. Though the occasional one-liners distract rather than enhance, Coyne's prose effortlessly carries the reader through a thorny history and into possible redemption.
July 15, 2009
A young woman engulfed by alcoholism is summoned home when her abusive father suffers a massive stroke and her mother kills herself.
Narrator Alexandra, aka Cat, has only one friend—Jack Daniels. Now in her late 20s, she's been absent from Wilton, her small Ohio hometown, for ten years, working as a stripper and cocktail waitress, living in rundown motels. Back at the family farmhouse, Cat learns that her mother shot herself in the kitchen, first considerately masking off the walls with plastic, even putting her suicide note in a Ziploc bag. The note, addressed to Cat, says,"He isn't who you think he is." At first Cat assumes"he" is her now-comatose father. Younger sister Wendy and older brother Jared arrive for Mom's funeral; only Wendy inquires about Dad. That becomes understandable as the narrative alternates between the summer Cat turned 17 and the present. Slim, girly Wendy was her father's princess. He directed much of his hostility and aggression against tomboyish, overweight Cat, molesting her almost in plain sight while her mother retreated. As the inevitable deathbed confrontation with Dad looms, Cat drifts in and out of sobriety, refusing to recall the ultimate violation that exiled her from Wilton. Her alcoholic daze and denial provide justification for the withholding of several crucial revelations (though of course the underlying reason is to heighten suspense). Other story problems are not so handily sidestepped. Wouldn't a wife seek help after her husband chops off her fingertip, forcing the children to watch? Would an entire town stand by as a father drags his daughter out of an Elks Club dance by her hair? Although belief is sometimes beggared, economical storytelling and Cat's snarky rejoinders to every attempt at polite sanctimony keep disbelief as precariously suspended as the rickety footbridge Dad forces the family to walk for his own amusement.
Coyne's sure-handed debut wrings new insight from the overexploited topics of incest and domestic violence.
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May 15, 2009
Summoned home after a 10-year absence by a neighbors shocking phone call, Cat enters the farmhouse where she wasnt so much raised as pummeled into submission. A delicate lavender sheet of paper waits for her on the kitchen table. Written in precise, cursive script, her mothers suicide noteHe isnt who you think he isis diabolically cryptic. Is he her father, the abusive drunk who now lays dying in a nearby hospital, or the young son she gave up at birth? Though Cat has long since crawled into a bottle to get away from such demons, her mothers deathforces her to relive and confront those nightmarish days when the solace she craved came in the arms of Addison, a young man who may once again prove to be her salvation. Thrumming with a desperate, malevolent intensity, Coynes debut novel is a psychological tour de force, a disturbing yet ultimately redemptive tale of the burden of secrets and the tenacity of love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)