The Woman Who Was Not All There: A Novel - Hardcover

Sharp, Paula

3.5

68 ratings by Goodreads

9780060159894: The Woman Who Was Not All There: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060159898 ISBN 13: 9780060159894

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1988

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After divorcing her husband, Marjorie LeBlanc struggles to raise and support her four children and find her own identity

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Review:

Novel Marjorie LeBlanc's husband "had misled her for so long that she learned to lean away from life to keep from falling over, like a woman walking a large dog." When they finally split up, she removes his name from their mailbox and wearily begins trying to understand what happened and figure out how she will raise four rambunctious children - Sam, Karen, Carla, and Ruth - alone. After work, Marjorie watches TV, reads, and plays cards on the porch with her women friends and neighbors, all of whom have their own sad man-stories to tell. Her loneliness makes her son Sam brood and stare at the ground, "as if he were building up his resistance against inevitable attacks of loneliness in his adult future." Karen abandons the family to live with her grandmother and live "normal," where hard-drinking housewives don't play cards, swear, and have lesbian friends. Ruth and Carla, hard-assed tom-boys determined to stay tough at any cost, make sure to get home before dark if their mother is alone in the house. In wonderfully inventive prose and sharp-tongued, witty dialogue, Paula Sharp shows us how, with the help of her friends, Marjorie's spirit prevails almost in spite of herself. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen

From Publishers Weekly:

This amusing first novel about an eccentric Southern family is a slow starter. The irregular and somewhat self-conscious rhythms of the narrative take a bit of getting used to, but after the first 100 pages or so readers who are still with it will realize that they have been drawn into the story by a steady and insistent series of images and characterizations that do, after all, add up to a memorable and witty first effort. Marjorie LeBlanc and her four children scrabble along in their shabby house in Durham, N.C. Byron Coffin, Marjorie's ex-husband"Mr. Big"is long gone, and the children have little sense of him beyond an occasional inappropriate gift that arrives in the mail. The story takes place over several years' time, during which the children grow up and Marjorie develops a sense of herself. Told in episodic chunks, the book is freighted with a little too much of everything: vivid descriptions, fantastic plot developments and pointed explanations are at times burdensome. There's a good story here, and any flaws are those of a writer of obvious ability whose enthusiasm occasionally outweighs her judgment. With experience, Sharp should reveal first-rate talent.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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