Alma Mater - Hardcover

Brown, Rita Mae

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 034542820X ISBN 13: 9780345428202

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2001

Synopsis

"Sex makes monkeys out of all of us. If you don?t give in to it, you wind up a cold, unfeeling bastard. If you do, you spend the rest of your life picking up the pieces."
--from Alma Mater

From the bestselling author of Rubyfruit Jungle comes an erotic and heartfelt new novel of sexual awakening, family loyalty, and unexpected first love.

Everyone on the William & Mary campus knows Victoria "Vic" Savedge. The six-foot-tall, raven-haired beauty can hardly blend into the cobblestones? especially on the arm of Charly Harrison, the school?s football star and son of one of Virginia's most prominent families.

Now, at the start of her senior year, Vic's future is mapped out in detail, courtesy of her mother, R.J., and her aunt Bunny. The plan is simple: Vic will marry Charly and settle into the role of a well-respected politician's wife. Though bright and branded by a fiery streak of independence, Vic hasn't really considered any other options. Until she meets a woman named Chris.

A transfer from Vermont, Chris is new to Southern mores and attitudes. Instantly captivated by Vic's beauty and larger-than-life personality, she finds herself drawn to the entire quirky but charming Savedge family. But the young women's friendship is not your basic college-girl variety. For neither can resist their mutual attraction?an attraction that erupts into a passion that will forever change the course of both their lives.

To embrace her true sexuality and sacrifice happiness with a man whom she truly loves are the wrenching decisions that Vic must face. It is a struggle at once terrifying and exhilarating. Just when she makes up her mind, she discovers that fate has its own surprising plan awaiting in the wings.

In her inimitable fashion, Rita Mae Brown brings to life plucky Southern sensibilities and characters grappling with profound emotional issues. A young woman's sudden, intense knowledge of herself?and all the conflicts and physical joys that it entails?are the backbone of this bold and tender love story.

About this title

About the Author

Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day, Six of One, Southern Discomfort, Sudden Death, High Hearts, Bingo, Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer’s Manual, Venus Envy, Dolley: A Novel of Dolley Madison in Love and War, Riding Shotgun, Loose Lips, Outfoxed, and a memoir, Rita Will. With her tiger cat, Sneaky Pie, she also collaborates on the New York Times bestselling Mrs. Murphy mystery series, including Claws and Effect. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, she lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Rita Mae Brown's Outfoxed

"Set in a small town in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains, the meticulously structured work could be a sociology thesis on the rarefied world of the fox hunt."
--Los Angeles Times

"Compelling . . . Engaging . . . [A] sly whodunit . . . A surprise finish . . . [Brown] succeeds in conjuring a world in which prey are meant to survive the chase and foxes are knowing collaborators (with hunters and hounds) in the rarefied rituals that define the sport."
--People

"A rich, atmospheric murder mystery steeped in the world of Virginia foxhunting . . . Rife with love, scandal, anger, transgression, redemption, greed, and nobility, all of which make good reading."
--San Jose Mercury News

"A snappy mystery . . . [Brown] does a masterly job of putting you in the saddle."
--The Baltimore Sun

"Original, funny, poignant, irresistible: Brown's best work in years . . . Not since Anthony Trollope has foxhunting been so vividly novelized."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Reviews

opular and prolific Brown (Rubyfruit Jungle, etc.) lavishes her attention and breathless prose on another lesbian coming-of-age tale set in Southern belle territory. Victoria "Vic" Savedge is a gorgeous 22-year-old senior at the College of William and Mary in present-day Virginia. Her parents, Frank and R.J., little sister Mignon and best friend Jinx Baptista all expect Vic to marry her rich football star boyfriend Charly Harrison after graduation. However, in the opening scene, Vic meets Chris Carter, a female transfer student to whom she is increasingly attracted. Their flirtatious behavior deflates any suspense Brown may have hoped to create; it's clear Vic's commitment to Charly is shaky. As she unconvincingly struggles to choose between lovers, Vic ponders with Jinx the roles fate, honor and individual responsibility play in life. During weekend visits to her ancestral home, Surry Crossing, Va., Vic is entertained by the smalltown antics of her womanizing Uncle Don and sex-deprived Aunt Bunny, and the Wallaces, neighboring middle-aged sisters who pathetically vie for their elderly father's favor. Brown's tendency to tell rather than show ("Raised in a judgmental family, Chris had survived by nourishing her sense of rebellion. She didn't know what she was looking for until she met Vic") and filler dialogue ("Sit down. It's my turn to give you a Coke" and "Mother, do you want a refill?" "No, thank you. But you may clean the ashtray") wear on the reader, and the one-dimensional characters and soap opera story line provide little relief. Brown's good-natured humor and exuberant treatment of her themes may satisfy her fans, but she's unlikely to pick up new readers this time around. 8-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Brown, the author of the Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries, returns to her lesbian roots in Alma Mater. Vic and Chris are two coeds who meet at William and Mary College and, much to their surprise, are mutually attracted and launch an intense affair. Though Vic is involved with the star football player, and though neither woman has ever considered the possibility that she might not be heterosexual, this life-changing turn of events does not seem to faze either of them. Brown usually excels at offbeat characters, and while she does offer readers an amusing and outlandish supporting cast (thanks to the Southern locale), her latest novel lacks the freshness and believability of her now classic Rubyfruit Jungle. Still, fans will welcome her return to the theme of her earlier work. Recommended for most public libraries.
- Caroline Mann, Univ. of Portland
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Brown returns to her roots in a novel reminiscent of her early successes, Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) and Six of One (1978). Alma Mater is rife with daft southern sensibility from the moment William and Mary college senior Vic greets her new neighbor and fellow coed Chris, a northerner. Vic brings Chris home for a relaxing weekend, and soon Sissy Wallace screeches up to confer with Vic's lawyer dad because she has just shot her "Poppy." Why? He prefers daughter Georgia, who tried to kill him by dropping a bale of shingles on him from the roof, to her, and has accordingly changed his will, even though Sissy fired a warning shot over his head. Since this is just another incident in the "recurring cycles of violence" in Sissy's family, Vic's mom, R. J. ("Orgy"), casually mixes doubles for everyone, as Poppy and Georgia roar up the driveway in pursuit of Sissy. Never a dull moment, R. J. remarks--happily, since she loves to entertain. Never dull, indeed, as Vic and Chris develop a passion (aside from the three-way with Vic's fiance) that is sure to disrupt a world of southern gentility in which a woman fellating a high-school boy may or may not be statutory rape but, Georgia assures us, is certainly bad manners. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

If knowledge were acquired by carrying books around, I’d be the sharpest tool in the shed,” Vic thought as she carted the last load up three flights of stairs on a hot summer day.

Sweat rolled between her breasts. Light poured into the rooms, the windows thrown open to catch any hope of a breeze. As she placed the carton on top of the old kitchen table, it swayed ever so slightly from the weight.

“Dammit!” a voice complained from outside.

Vic walked to the kitchen window that overlooked a well-maintained yard. A small creek bordered one side of the property, a line of thick pines obscuring the view into the neighbor’s yard.

Vic leaned out her window and listened to the sounds of struggle and fury. She trotted down the stairs, jumped the creek, and emerged through the pines. A young woman perhaps five feet five inches tall, blond, her back turned to Vic, was cussing a blue streak while trying to slide an old dresser from the back of an equally old Mercedes station wagon.

“Need a hand?” Vic’s low alto startled the woman.

She turned around. “You scared the shit out of me!” Her voice betrayed Pennsylvania origins.

“Sorry.” Vic smiled. “I’m your neighbor. Vic Savedge. Come on, we’ll get the dresser out and we can carry it up together.”

“I’m Chris Carter.” The woman held out her hand.

Both women smiled and shook hands.

Then Vic removed the dresser with one pull.

“How’d you do that?”

“Patience. You lost yours,” Vic sensibly replied.

“Guess I did.” Then she slyly added, “Anyone ever tell you you’re big and strong?”

“Every day. And it doesn’t get them anywhere.” Vic laughed. “But in your case, seeing as how I have to live next to you for the year, I’ll carry this up.”

Chris struggled to pick up one end. “This thing is awkward.” She blinked to keep the sweat out.

“Put it down,” Vic commanded.

“Why?”

“Just put it down,” Vic repeated. “You go ahead of me and open the doors.”

“You aren’t going to carry that up by yourself, are you?”

“It’ll be easier than trying to maneuver you and the dresser.” Vic hoisted the bird’s-eye maple dresser on her back, bent over, and started up the back stairs of the Olsen house. Chris’s apartment was at the top of that house just as Vic’s apartment was at the top of the DeReuter house. She gladly put down her burden when she reached the top of the last flight, breathed deeply, then picked it up again and headed toward the bedroom. Chris led the way, apologizing with every step. Vic placed the dresser against the wall.

“There.”

“Thank you. Really. I can’t thank you enough.”

“A Co’Cola would help.” Vic wiped her brow, droplets of sweat spraying off her fingertips.

Chris’s kitchen was graced with newer appliances than were in Vic’s kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door, pulled out a cold can of Coke, grabbed a glass with dancing polar bears on it, dropped in ice cubes, and poured the soda. Then she repeated the process for herself.

“They taste better over ice.”

Vic gulped hers down. “True.”

“Here, you need another one.” Chris popped open another can and poured its contents into Vic’s glass. Her eyes met Vic’s for a second. Vic had green eyes, deep electric green. Set against her black hair, her eyes could be almost hypnotic. “You have the most incred- ible eyes.”

Vic laughed. “It runs in the family. So does the height—my mother’s six-one, too.” Then she studied Chris. “Well, you’ve got brown eyes and blonde hair and you’re petite. I bet everyone tells you you’re pretty, it’s a beautiful combination. Do you listen to them?”

“Never. Do you?”

“No, I don’t want to be known for how I look but for what I do.”

“If we were both butt-ugly we’d probably feel different.”

They laughed; then Vic said, “What year are you?”

“Junior. I’m a transfer from the University of Vermont. It’s a good school, but I never knew how much I hated cold weather until I wound up in Vermont. Fall starts in August. I think you have to be born to it, you know?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been to Vermont. The farthest north I’ve been was to visit Cornell but it was during summer.”

“Same difference. Fall starts there in August, too.” She finished her drink. “Are you moved in?”

“Yes,” Vic said with relief. “I’d just put the last carton of books on the table when I heard you.”

“Was I that loud?” Chris’s hand flew to her mouth, an unexpectedly feminine gesture.

“Uh-huh.”

“It could have been worse. I could have yelled ‘fuck.’ ”

Vic laughed again. “One of two things would have happened: Every old biddy on the street would have fainted dead or the men would have come running, hoping you meant it.”

Chris wrinkled her nose. “Neither prospect sounds very appetizing.” She took the glass from Vic’s hand. “What year are you?”

“Senior.”

“Lucky dog.”

“I guess. I still have to get through it. Don’t count your chickens, et cetera.” She walked over to the sink as Chris washed out the two glasses. “Do you know anyone at William and Mary?”

“Not really. I fell in love with the school and figured I’d make friends.”

“You’re in luck. I have wonderful friends. If you’re really good to me, you can meet them.”

“I’m pretty damn good,” Chris replied.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 034542820X
• ISBN 13: 9780345428202
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272