Confessions of a Bad Girl

From Library Journal It is difficult to say why this collection of stories is such pleasurable reading. Perhaps it is the lack of pretension, so evident in the flat, stripped-down writing and quickly sketched characters, the absence of the original insights we seek in literature. As we read we are breathlessly carried from one story to another via short, choppy sentences that cause pleasant emotional crescendos--little waves of sadness, or nostalgia, or joy--all arising from observations about mundane but pivotal events that befall such characters as a pregnant wife and her philandering husband ("Family Planning in Summer") or a middle-aged woman contemplating a facelift ("Orphans"). These are people we know and understand. A collection that will have broad appeal.- Alice Shane, New YorkCopyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. Product Description The author reveals her quirky vision in a collection of stories that explore the vagaries, tenuousness and tenacity of family relationships From Publishers Weekly While not all of the 15 linked stories in this collection are equally successful, their cumulative effect is impressive. Pesetsky ( Midnight Sweets ) is an original writer who belongs to no school; though her style is spare and pithy, she is not a minimalist, and her distinctive voice--she writes in straightforward, sometimes staccato sentences packed with meaning--conveys the essence of characters who are ordinary and quirky at the same time. Most of the stories concern two families linked by one character who moves between them. Cissie (the tough, pragmatic but secretly vulnerable "bad" girl) and Sylvester are siblings in a fractious, disintegrating family living in Milwaukee. For a time, Sylvester tries to establish ties to another family, the Spacedons, who have a strange secret--all four of the children are orphans adopted as young adults--yet the Spacedons seem to have a cohesion lacking in Cissie and Sylvester's family. In reality, however, Pesetsky's characters are all metaphorical orphans: children are alienated from their parents, and vice versa in the next generation. The narratives concern missed emotional connections, yearnings for intimacy that cannot be achieved. "Closeness may be a myth," Sylvester laments, a conclusion readers will share. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.