The Girls - Hardcover

Kagan, Elaine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679433953 ISBN 13: 9780679433958

Publisher: Knopf, 1994

Synopsis

Now in their forties, six midwestern women have enjoyed a close personal friendship for years, sharing the intimate details of one another's lives until the marriage of one of their number and her husband crashes violently

About this title

Reviews

First-novelist Kagan is literate and intelligent, but her attempt at commercial fiction leaves a lot to be desired. The six "girls" who grew up together in Kansas City are now in their 50s, but they and their former boyfriends and current husbands have remained closely knit. When Jessie Chickery shoots her flagrantly womanizing husband Pete, each of the "girls" relates her version of the event, which entails recounting memories of their shared pasts in minute and often irrelevant detail. A thread through their stories is their secret relationships with Pete, who is variously depicted as cold and manipulative or caring and generous, having seduced and cruelly dropped some of the "girls" but made others feel loved, beautiful and needed. Kagan's attempt to delineate Pete's complicated personality via each character's first-person narration results in long monologues that sustain a note of histrionic self-indulgence. Though she tries to vary their voices, the women all sound alike, speaking in identical repetitive phrases and short, choppy sentences. One character says: "I was drunk. I was." Another emotes: "I can't do this. I just can't." A third: "I knew I was alive. Alive for the first time." There is a sameness to their lives, too: they have all been sad and desperate and have had serious emotional breakdowns. A ridiculously melodramatic funeral scene seems written for a TV movie. 50,000 first printing; Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Elaine Kagan's years as a television and theater actress lend a dimension of theatrical perceptiveness to her writing. Her finely tuned ear captures character through dialogue at perfect pitch. The Girls, her first novel, gets off to a promising start in the monologues of five women, friends since high school 20 years earlier, after a sixth friend, Jessie, shoots her husband, Pete Chickery. A series of convincing testimonies by the women reveals a kaleidoscopic picture of Pete: stereotypical womanizer, wife- abuser, the ideal male who knows exactly how to enhance each woman's self-image, the perfect lover, and the hated brother. Pete Chickery, killed before the book begins, dominates the novel. The fast pace of the action prevents the characters and the reader from questioning the assumption that Jessie killed Pete in self-defense. The image of Pete as a violent man is sustained both by what Jessie tells us and by the reminiscing of their son James. Even Jessie's rampage of self-destruction that ends with a slashed wrist does not prepare us for Pete's final postmortem monologue in which he recounts the events of the fateful Tuesday morning: how he followed Jessie to their friends' house because he couldn't bear to leave town without a reconciliation; how his motive was love, not violence; how, seeing Jesse pointing the gun at her own throat, he saved her but was accidentally killed when the gun went off in the struggle. Despite a writing style that is crisp and clean, tightly woven, with the dramatic punch of a whodunit, we are left with the unanswered question: Was Pete a hero or a villain? To make a reader suspend disbelief, a writer must sustain that reader's trust. In the end, this novel breaks that trust with a surprise ending that runs counter to the evidence we've been given. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This absorbing, cleverly crafted first novel begins and ends with the killing of Pete Chickery by his wife, Jessie. In between we learn just who he was from many points of views. Each chapter carries the distinct voice and perspective of friend or family as they gather for his funeral in Kansas City, Missouri. They share remembrances of all-American high school days, reveal shifting relationships, and recount the successes, losses, and betrayals of ordinary lives. The character of Pete develops through each reminiscence, materializing as the glue that holds the story and these lives together. He emerges as interestingly, realistically complex: adoring family man; irrepressible philanderer; abusive, controlling husband; traveling salesman; and devoted friend who is both thoroughly engaging and maddeningly oblivious to his wife's increasing despair. Recommended for fiction collections.
- Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kagan may not have made a big name for herself as an actress, but her first novel may well establish her as a pop novelist. In flashback, she tells a bittersweet tale about a group of high-school friends, now in middle age, who are brought together by the death of the group's central figure, Pete. The book opens with the straitlaced Ellen telling the wilder Frances the unbelievable details surrounding Pete's gruesome death. But Kagan does not simply give ordinary, two-way dialogue; instead, it is only Ellen's voice we hear, never Frances'. In unusual but workable fashion, the dialogue shifts between third person as Ellen talks about Pete and first person when she remembers her encounters with him. Each following chapter is another friend's story, from which we learn that Pete was cruel, thoughtful, arrogant, selfish, giving, romantic, vengeful--it just depends on who's telling the story. The book culminates in the reunion of the group at the funeral and wake. The last two chapters, from the points of view of Pete's wife and of Pete himself, add a perfect mix of paradox and closure without resorting to absurd plot twists. Expect demand based on word of mouth and publisher publicity. Mary Frances Wilkens

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679433953
• ISBN 13: 9780679433958
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 307