Review by New York Times Review
Fifteen years after his last novel in the series, Tim Sandlin revisits the characters of his fictional Wyoming town. LYDIA ELKRUNNER (née Callahan) is not a very nice person. She insults on a whim and delights in temper tantrums. She refuses to repair the brake lights on her decaying BMW because that "would be giving other drivers, too much information." At 58, she acts as if she's 20 and, of a benign nonagenarian, gleefully quips, "Don't you admire the Eskimo ritual of leaving their elderly behind on an ice flow." Really, she's everything self: self-absorbed, self-important, self-indulgent. "You know why living with you would be so healthy, Grandma?" her down-and-out 28-year-old granddaughter remarks. "Because you are so incredibly wrong that you clarify what is right." Lydia, those familiar with the raucous novels of Tim Sandlin already know, is the mother of Sam Callahan, a writer living in the fictional town of GroVont, Wyo. "Lydia" is, in fact, the fourth installment in Sandlin's GroVont series, which includes the uneven though generally well-received novels "Skipped Parts," "Sorrow Floats" and "Social Blunders" and, along with Sam, features his childhood girlfriend, Maurey Pierce. This book appears to be the last. "I have now been with Maurey and Sam through four novels, two movies and 27 years," Sandlin writes in the acknowledgments. "My loved ones say that's enough." He even includes a brief coda, wryly titled "Loose Ends," which feels like the concluding montage of a reality TV show. (Of one character, Sandlin notes, "He no longer fears uncontrollable suicide.") To be fair, Lydia has reason to be angry: her son is the product of a five-man gang rape when she was 14. In turn, Lydia evolved into an anarchical feminist, and at the start of this novel has just completed a stint in federal prison for FedExing a poisoned chew toy to Ronald Reagan's dog. ("Reagan, always the idiot, appointed a male attorney general.") There are in actuality four stories here: Lydia's campaign for acceptance and redemption; the triumphs and travails of Oly Pedersen, a 99-year-old local celebrity whose life story Lydia's parole officer demands she record as her "community service"; the mystery surrounding Maurey's adopted son, Roger, who was kidnapped and later abandoned as a child; and the revenge of Leroy, the psychopath who snatched Roger and now wants to kill him. Soon Lydia, Oly and Roger hit the road, aiming to uncover the truth about Roger's parentage. With Leroy (and later Sam and Maurey) in pursuit, it's clear that any enlightenment won't come easy. Sandlin doesn't specialize in subtlety. In large part, he relates his story via megaphone, with loud plot turns and louder wisecracks. "Life is a Saturday-morning cartoon meant to entertain a God who tends to sleep late" is a typical one-line digression. But although the novel masquerades as jeremiad, it's ultimately uplifting, adroitly chronicling the ways we seek to transcend our fears. Lydia's malice persists because she knows she's getting old, and getting old means becoming ineffectual. "She'd gone into prison as a force to be reckoned with and come out a tiny shred of aged mass. Strangers dismissed her as irrelevant. Hatred, she could fight; being dismissed was intolerable." By far the best part of the novel is Oly's story, from his birth in Delaware to his pilgrimage West and his sojourns in France. Told in long stretches offset in sans-serif type, it's practically whispered, assuming a much-welcomed quietude. Approaching his 100 th birthday, Oly offers a biography that's no doubt largely invented and inflated, chockablock with suspect coincidences. Lydia may not buy it wholesale, but when forced to listen to Oly's dicta - "Despair gets tedious if it lasts long enough" - she slowly accepts his wisdom. This knowledge eventually gives her the fillip for a chaotic epiphany, and it's immensely satisfying to witness. Better still, the transformation isn't rendered with a heavy hand. For a novel that shouts its drollery from the rooftops, the insights "Lydia" offers are brilliantly understated. Mike Peed has written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post and other publications.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 24, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The latest in Sandlin's GroVont series, this ribald tale centers around Lydia, a fiftysomething rebel freshly released from prison for attempting to kill President Reagan's dog via a poisoned chew toy. She travels home to GroVont, Wyoming, where her son, Sam, is the owner of a boardinghouse for pregnant teens. Roger, an adolescent with a mysterious past, also works there, and the newly freed Lydia thinks she has information on Roger's past. While Lydia records the life story of Oly, a geriatric centenarian, for her parole-enforced community service, Roger decides he must speak with the author of a novel that may describe his past. Lydia, Oly, and Roger set off on a cross-country journey of discovery. On the trip, love blossoms unexpectedly for Roger while something much darker ripens inside Lydia. Oly presents his thoroughly entertaining biography throughout the trip taking them through WWI, 1920s Paris, and severe heartbreak while Roger comes closer to danger than he ever suspected. A wonderfully woven tapestry of stories, this gem of a novel is as audacious as it is sentimental and ends on a shocking note that no one could have predicted.--Hunt, Julie Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Picking up the characters from his GroVant trilogy, published 15 years ago, Sandlin returns to the small Wyoming town where it all began. Newbies can quickly get up to speed on the major players despite the convoluted plot: narrator Sam Callahan; his aimless adult daughter, Shannon; and his mother, Lydia, recently released from prison after a long-ago attempt to poison Ronald Reagan's dog. Lydia's parole requires writing the life story of centenarian Oly Pedersen, but then she hatches a scheme for a road trip to California (taking along Oly) so Roger, a young man unofficially adopted by Sam, might discover his origins. Meanwhile, the terrifying Leroy, who dumped Roger off on friends years ago, is hunting him now, believing Roger must die for the universe to achieve balance. The story itself fails to live up to Sandlin's quirky, colorful characters: Oly's pretend catatonia; Sam's star-worship of Roger's possible father, who wrote Yeast Infection; Lydia's conniving self-absorption; Shannon's bizarre ideas on seduction. And a dissonant tonality develops as a result of all the "zany" juxtaposed against Oly's serious narrative, whether true, or, as Lydia believes, concocted. More troubling, though, is the first-person POV that continually takes the reader out of the narrative flow. So much of the story occurs without Sam's attendance that confusion reigns; how can he possibly know what everyone's doing? (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Fans of Sandlin's GroVont trilogy (Skipped Parts; Sorrow Floats; Social Blunders) will welcome this long-awaited sequel. Running the Virgin Birth Home for Unwed Mothers ("Madonnaville"), Sam Callahan tries to keep a cadre of pregnant teenagers on track, while his daughter Shannon's life falls apart and his mother, Lydia, comes home from a stint in prison for trying to mail a poisoned bone to President Reagan's dog. Lydia soon breaks parole while documenting the oral history of the town's oldest resident and simultaneously tracking down the lost parentage of a troubled adoptee. With a violent psychopath hunting the boy down, the journey of Sandlin's characters converges in a Santa Barbara backyard, after a thoughtful, wide-ranging, adventurous romp through their histories. Sandlin's prose is sharp and witty. He writes with a depth of feeling that illustrates his love for his characters, even the most grotesque. Verdict Readers will find plenty of adventure, drama, and dark comedy, as well as wonderful turns of phrase, destined to be repeated and savored, or stolen for personal use. An excellent discovery for backlist reads.-Julie Kane, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
