Why Did I Ever: A Novel - Hardcover

Mary Robison; Robison, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582430608 ISBN 13: 9781582430607

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2001

Synopsis

Money Breton, a Hollywood script doctor, finds the stresses and challenges of modern life beginning to wreak havoc as she struggles to cope with three ex-husbands, the I.R.S., the problems of her grown children, and the bizarre world of Hollywood filmdom.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Robison is the author of three story collections and two novels. She has written for Hollywood and been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1977. She has taught with many writing programs and is now a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Reviews

In her first novel in a decade, Robison, a writer with switchblade wit, unveils the helter-skelter consciousness of Money Breton. The cynical veteran of three marriages and the mother of two screwed-up adult children, Money, still a man-magnet, is a Hollywood script doctor who commutes from a small town somewhere outside New Orleans. When she isn't pretending to work, she holds surreal conversations with the Deaf Lady, trades insults with two persistent suitors, frets over her missing cat, and takes out her fear and anger on household objects. Money's gay son, Paulie, has been tortured and raped and is currently in police custody. Mev, Money's lawyer daughter, is struggling with a methadone habit. Crazy with worry and embroiled in the maddening revision of an idiotic script about Bigfoot, Money riffs with a caustic yet deadpan humor not unlike that of Lynda Barry on men, movies, traffic, airlines, and life in general in 572 terse, numbered, and jabbing paragraphs. Robison's incandescent soliloquy on the absurdity of existence hones fiction to a new and exhilarating measure of sharpness. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Robison has constructed her third novel, the first in a decade, as a series of brief segments (527 in all), reflecting narrator Money Breton's ADD syndrome. Because she is undermedicated, Breton must struggle to maintain her concentration long enough to keep her Hollywood script-writing position and her sense of humor. By night, Breton is hammering nails or painting every object in her house; by day, she seeks to provide the right bits of advice and the right amount of motherly support to her methadone-addicted daughter and to her son, the victim of an unspeakable crime. With questionable assistance from several well-meaning friends, including a filthy-rich boyfriend with a limited vocabulary, Breton balances her difficulties long enough to see the proverbial thin ray of light at the end of the tunnel. Robison's characters are vivid, colorful, and likable, and their story is absorbing. Her humorous presentation does not cheapen the tragic content of her novel but realistically portrays one method of survival. Highly recommended for all public and academic fiction collections. Rebecca A. Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., IA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1582430608
• ISBN 13: 9781582430607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200