Remembering Jody: A Novel

Having grown up Jewish in the South, Marcia Rose, in Seattle the summer of 1989 with her lover, wonders if she can escape her past, until she finds her childhood friend, Jody, who is mentally disturbed--a condition for which Marcia feels responsible--andrealizes that she must re-evaluate who she is and where she comes from

An adolescent romance manque between kindred spirits Marsha and Jody?drawn to each other by their Jewish backgrounds and family connections in the relentlessly Baptist town of Sparta, S.C., where they grew up?provides the central myth of screenwriter Coburn's (Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle) frothy debut novel. When the story begins in 1989, Marsha?by now a D.C.-based magazine journalist who's spending the summer in Seattle with boyfriend Paul?finds herself face to face with the long-lost playmate of her childhood. But Jody has become a schizophrenic, and has "escaped" from his parents' home to find Marsha. Alternating chapters?neatly titled "Seattle" or "South Carolina" or "College"?employ flashback with unconvincing facility. Tedium will set in for readers as, in plodding prose, Coburn piles on anecdotes about quirky Southerners. The novel's lack of both a center and a felicitous style makes the forming of emotional bonds between readers and the book's characters difficult, at best.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Conventional debut about a schizophrenic who almost topples friends, lovers, and family. Visiting her boyfriend Paul in Seattle (should she really give up her home in D.C. and move in with him?), magazine writer Marsha Rose is shocked when she glances from Pauls apartment window and spies her childhood friend Jody below. A stranger to him since the onset of his schizophrenia ten years before, Marsha rushes down to discover a Jody who is only semi-lucid. As if mimicking Jody's confusion, Marsha's narrative splits in two, one half taking a linear path that returns her and Jody to their childhood home in South Carolina, the other remembering Jody as the attractive, healthy boy he once was. The isolation of growing up Jewish in a small southern town is what once had served to bring Marsha and Jody together. But after Jody became ill (and Marsha blamed herself for it), all she came to be left with are memories and random anecdotes of his mental disarray. After his brief stay in a Seattle hospital for cutting himself while under her care, it becomes Marsha's melancholy job to take him back to South Carolina, probably to life in an institution. The trip also gives her an excuse to separate from Paul, now grown wary of her entanglement with Jody. Once hes home and back on medication, Jodys mind clarifies, as does Marshas when she begins to reconsider the state of her family: her parents disgruntled marriage, the atrophy of her hometown, the prosaic lives of those she left behind. But her cathartic journey north (she resolves to move in with Paul; Jody is able to live on his own) seems more literary than emotional as Coburn emphasizes the clinical over the human aspect of mental illness, ultimately distancing the reader. Competent, but curiously little emotion comes through in spite of the subject at hand. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Marsha Rose is at an important juncture in her life when Jody turns up. They grew up together in South Carolina, a pair of displaced Jews in a Baptist world. In the ten years since they've seen each other, Jody has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Marsha struggles to help Jody deal with his disease and in the process learns much about herself and the nature of love. Through a series of flashbacks to childhood, the reader shares Marsha's memories and experiences the kind of Southern coming of age portrayed in Olive Ann Burns's Cold Sassy Tree (LJ 10/15/84) and Fannie Flagg's Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1987). The depictions of a schizophrenic's symptoms and the confusion these produce for both him and his family are accurate and touching. This is a book with heart and wisdom that should appeal to a wide readership.?Kim Uden Rutter, Lake Villa District Lib., IL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.