Some Girls - Hardcover

McCloy, Kristin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525938370 ISBN 13: 9780525938378

Publisher: E. P. Dutton, 1994

Synopsis

Overwhelmed by the chaotic pace of her new home in New York City, New Mexico-born Claire befriends the mysterious and sophisticated Jade, and enters a world of sensuality that demands she redefine her sense of self.

About this title

Reviews

Her first novel, the highly erotic Velocity , established McCloy as a gifted writer unafraid to take risks. Here she confirms her gifts in an assured, tightly honed narrative that explores another kind of eroticism: that of sexual attraction between women. Her heroine, unsophisticated Claire Stearn from Alamogordo, N.M., comes to New York, determined to satisfy her inchoate restlessness. Claire is alternately enchanted and repelled by the big city, just as she is alternately drawn to and frightened by Jade, her apartment neighbor in TriBeCa. Exquisitely glamorous, cynical, reckless, enigmatic and seductive, Jade introduces Claire to her bisexual friends and the seedy bars and clubs they frequent. In contrast, when Claire's stalwart rancher boyfriend comes to New York, the familiar tourist attractions seem tame. Claire is devastated by guilt after Jade lures her to bed, and Jade decamps to Europe where she picks up a macho photojournalist. McCloy sustains the suspense in this narrative with taut precision, keeping Claire on a tightrope of conflicting emotions, the two women in a seesawing relationship and the reader totally engrossed in her story. Meanwhile, she offers a lively Baedecker to New York, depicting its varied neighborhoods and often louche inhabitants in prose at once graphic and lyrical. Though she creates an unrealistically ideal relationship between Claire and her attorney employer, in the end McCloy's deft juxtaposition of gritty realism with the euphoria of sexual passion makes a powerful and consistently intriguing narrative. QPB selection.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The author of Velocity (1988) lives up to the acclaim of her notable debut in a sultry second novel--a visceral, earthy portrait of 1980s New York City life as seen through the eyes of a New Mexican transplant. Sensing that life is bigger than the desert from which she hails, 23-year-old tabula rasa Claire takes $500 and moves into a tiny apartment in TriBeCa. She temps by day, returns home at night, and spends all of her spare time deeply inhaling the dirty, wondrous city. Alone and getting lonely, she meets neighbor Jade, who's as wild as Claire is innocent: Jade speaks many languages, wears few clothes, and never runs out of money. Claire is dazzled. The two become wine-drinking pals, then confidantes (their friendship briefly complicated by Claire's boyfriend Tommy's visit), and finally, one boozy, clubbing night, lovers. The awkward morning-after marks a relationship hiatus: Jade abruptly jets to Paris, Berlin, Tibet; Claire lands a permanent job at an environmental law firm. But she misses Jade and, in a bout of confused homesickness, returns to New Mexico to confirm that Tommy's not her guy and the desert's not her place. She and Jade converge in New York. Will they reconcile? Will Claire ever really know the secretive, seductive girl next door? The ending (incongruously abrupt and improbable) forces Claire to seize her fate. Up to then she had drifted aimlessly, wide-eyed at the vast space and liberty she'd discovered. Readers will be at home in McCloy's clean prose--always vibrant and sensual--and in the disarmingly fresh view she creates from unassuming Claire's perspective. Even New Yorkers will see New York for the first time. Youthful, downtown (and lesbian) content stunningly draped in polished, uptown style. (Quality Paperback Book Club selection) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"She waited for her suitcase, thinking, It will be better in the city....[Riding] into the city...she knew already; the city was a terror, glossy buildings rising out of a slum, a place of anarchy, crooked and lawless, impenetrable." Fresh from New Mexico, where her boyfriend raises horses for a living, Claire meets the exotic Jade. Jade is "the queen of disguises," and her current employment and past relationships are unclear. The chemistry between the two women builds to a one-night affair that leaves them both terrified. Claire shuns Jade, fearful of being called a lesbian, while Jade leaves the country and returns with a boyfriend. Their relationship continues nonetheless. There is no great adventure in this quiet novel; rather, it unfolds the complicated relationship of two very different women who overcome loneliness through their love for each other. A moving, tender, and smoothly written novel by the author of Velocity (Washington Square: S. & S., 1990) that is recommended for public libraries.
David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

McCloy takes the old story of the shy country girl adrift in New York City and reinvigorates it in this sharp, witty, engaging love story. Claire, the country mouse, leaves Alamogordo, New Mexico, and in it her chain-smoking, embittered mother, emotionally distant sister, and taciturn lover, Tommy, who lives alone on 500 acres of desert. Once relocated, Claire is irresistibly drawn to her neighbor, the exotic and mysterious Jade, which begins an irreversible journey to self-discovery and reinvention. She faces major culture shock as, setting out to create a new life and self, she meets and overcomes the challenges of homesickness, loneliness, a tough job market, and New York cab drivers. She ping-pongs between her known, predictably dull but solid past and the possibilities of an unknown future with a woman whose secret life poses the most daunting test of all. McCloy tells this tale of friendship, eroticism, and self-discovery with charmingly direct sweetness, making it a good pick for mainstream as well as lesbian fiction collections. Whitney Scott

Edition details

• Publisher: E. P. Dutton
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0525938370
• ISBN 13: 9780525938378
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 263