Lost in Jersey City: A Novel - Hardcover

Sharp, Paula

3.65

20 ratings by Goodreads

9780060165642: Lost in Jersey City: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060165642 ISBN 13: 9780060165642

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1993

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Moving from Baton Rouge to Jersey City, innocent but determined Ida Terhune leaves her stale second marriage, takes her children, and starts a new life, embarking on a series of unexpected personal transformations. By the author of The Imposter.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A Baton Rouge matron flees to Jersey City to start life anew, only to find herself in a no-man's-land of rent strikes, hired thugs, and life-threatening potholes--in this earthy comedy by Sharp (The Imposter, 1991; The Woman Who Was Not All There, 1988). Like most southern women, Ida Terhune was taught to assume she would always be cared for by a man. When her husband and father passed away on the same day, leaving Ida with one child and another on the way, she naturally married the first suitor who presented himself, the gentlemanly Harlan Terhune. As it turned out, Harlan had little interest in Ida and even less in her children, so after years of emotional neglect, stiff-necked, polyester-pant-suited Ida decides she has no choice but to pack the kids into her Chrysler and flee to the Jersey City apartment of her best friend, Betty Trombley. There, Ida is disturbed to find that action-addicted Betty has joined her fellow slum tenants in an all-out war against their landlord, who's allowed a lake of sewer water to rise to shin level on the basement floor. As Ida's children nimbly accustom themselves to hanging out with the homeless, wandering the broken, abandoned sidewalks of Jersey City, and shoplifting in their spare time, Ida struggles genteelly to leave the apartment, find a job, and arrange for a decent education for her kids. The theft of her car sends this stalwart lady reeling so off-center that she ends up accidentally killing the landlord's thuggish son--but just as she faces a life sentence in prison, another male savior appears, this time in the form of her eccentric Brazilian-American defense attorney, who'll win Ida's heart as he rescues her from doom. Sharp painstakingly sets up a number of comic situations that fizzle out disappointingly in the end--but this antic novel charms nevertheless with its frantic humor and roguish cast. -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Uncertainty of characterization and plot direction undermines this otherwise witty and promising novel about a newly independent woman. Determined to dump her philandering second husband, Ida Terhune leaves Baton Rouge, La., on July 24, 1982, and bullheadedly aims her Chrysler New Yorker in the direction of Jersey City. After an adventurous trip that includes losing her trailer in a hurricane and putting up at the Playboy Hotel in Atlanta, Ida and her precocious children, nine-year-old Skeet and his younger sister Sherry, move in with her brassy best friend in a Jersey apartment building managed by a slum lord. Here, the book casts about to regain its initial momentum and almost succeeds after Ida accidentally hits and kills the slumlord's adult son with her behemoth automobile; the rest of the story focuses on a self-consciously wacky court trial that pits naive Ida against veterans of a corrupt system. Ida's beehive hairdo, polyester outfits and aggravatingly cautious ways make her seem old beyond her 38 years, and she frequently relies on her worldly friends to rescue her from trouble. Sharp ( The Woman Who Was Not All There ) forgoes giving Ida credibility in favor of making her a comic figure to advance the plot of what's meant to be a madcap story about culture shock. Thus, though the book has many humorous passages, much of its hilarity feels forced.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.