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The Shortest Way Home by Elaine Reidy (Dominican Republic 196365) AuthorHouse September 2004 369 pages $19.95 |
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Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 196365) | ||||
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OH, HOW THIS BOOK TOOK ME BACK! Elaine Reidys The Shortest Way Home is a bildungsroman, the tale of a young, working class![]() Lina, who seems to live on cigarettes and Coca Cola, emerges as a sexually puritanical, hard-working, dedicated, sassy young woman with a head of ever-wilder red hair, a pair of large breasts on an increasingly skinny frame, and innate talents for crooning ballads and winning at cards. One of the best scenes in this book is a game of gin rummy between Lina and Dieudonné, a Haitian journalist and voodoo practitioner, during which Reidy skillfully writes a duel of power and vulnerability at the card table. At one point Dieudonné says,
Its the stuff of a Graham Greene novel, but Im sorry to say that most of the book doesnt come up to the level of the writing in this scene. Nonetheless, The Shortest Way Home is a valuable piece of literature, particularly for those interested in the early days of the Peace Corps. It describes and evokes the mid-1960s experiences of Volunteers in Latin American countries with a specificity I havent found elsewhere. |
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Marnie Muellers Peace Corps novel, Green Fires, was the winner of the Maria Thomas Award for Outstanding Fiction and an American Book Award. The Climate of the Country, her second novel, is set in Tule Lake Japanese American Segregation Camp where she was born. Her most recent novel, My Mothers Island, was a BookSense 76 Selection.
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