Shy Girl

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Elizabeth Stark's debut novel Shy Girl is not for shy readers. Stark dazzles us with honesty. A confident lesbian body-piercer who lives deep in the middle of San Francisco's lesbian culture, Stark's main character — Alta Corral — will inspire all readers with her relentless pursuit of truth. Shy Girl is an archaeological dig into our own backyards. It's the story of how childhood shapes us and what happens when we forget, dismiss, or ignore the foundations that support our adult lives. Shy Girl also is an unusual tale about falling in love with the girl next door.

Alta falls in love with Sasha, whom she dubs Shy Girl underneath the sprinklers when they are kids. They're both girls, and that leads to more problems for Shy along the way than for Alta. Alta gets that she's different. When the two become teens, Alta learns to tolerate the boys that come asking her for advice about how to woo Shy. Late at night, after Shy's boyfriends drop her off at the front door, Shy goes next door to Alta's house or Alta creeps into Shy's house. While their mothers try hard to shrug off the closeness growing between Alta and Sasha, the two teens explore. They explore their bodies, their souls, their lives. It becomes love, yet everyone but Alta wishes it weren't so. Shy's straight... at least on the outside — what does this magnetic pull toward Alta mean for her?

Too confused and too scared to figure things out, Shy bolts for Seattle, leaving both Alta and her mother devastated in loss. Here is where Stark's evocative novel twists gently toward the past whilealsoreaching for the future. Shy Girl is about an intense friendship between two girls. It's also the story of their mothers, of how silence and intolerance shape us, and of both the quiet and bold ways we come to accept the truth that lives within us.

The years pass. Shy never returns. Alta discovers acceptance and happiness in the heart of San Francisco. There, her difference is celebrated. She blossoms into a motorcycle-riding, tough-minded dyke with uncanny luck with the girls. Alta dallies with these admirers, but she never forgets Shy. It's as if Shy is with her always.

It takes her mother's stroke and imminent death for Shy to return. Actually, it takes Alta's careful coaxing. Shy, it turns out, is cranky and pregnant — and always hates to be reminded about her mother. She didn't leave the Bay Area just because of Alta. She left to escape her mother, who always was odd and obsessive in the way she hovered over Shy. Alta, on the other hand, feels much fondness and gratitude toward Shy's mother. After Shy fled to Seattle, the two bonded in their grief, and Shy's mother offered Alta a kindness she'll never, ever forget.

At this lonely woman's deathbed, Alta and Shy awkwardly begin to tell one another the secrets that have kept them apart all of these years. In the process, the two young women uncover other secrets — deeper, older ones that their mothers kept. When these long-hidden truths are revealed, everything changes between the two.

Obviously, Shy Girl is a novel for mature readers. However, teens on the verge of their own adulthood will appreciate the way author Elizabeth Stark explores powerful, passionate, ambiguous relationships. Alta Corral is a breath of fresh air, too — a brave role model, a young woman who learns (finally!) how to live and love honestly.

Stark offers teens another gift when she, without moralizing, reveals a sad truth about youth. Often, when we're young, we squander people and opportunities in our lives, and, of course, those decisions come back to haunt us later. Because of the masterful way Stark weaves readers from the present, into the past, and then out into future possibilities in her characters' lives, we're able to feel the impact of decisions made long ago in their lives. We're able to see the moments that change them forever. Freedom comes by facing the truth about our lives — our mistakes, triumphs, and the tangled stuff in between. Shy Girl is more than a love story. It's a tale about patience and acceptance.

—Cathy Young

BUST Magazine

Shy Girl is an entertaining and well-written first novel, and a story full of secrets. Every character has one, and although some may seem obvious to the reader, the way each secret ultimately unfolds is a pleasure.

David Bahr

Elizabeth Stark's Shy Girl is a breezy, likable debut novel that strives for a transcendent pathos it never attains. The ambitious Stark obviously intended to write a hip, quirky and accessible novel that addresses serious issues of identity, secrecy in human relationships and the binding force of sorrow.
&151;Time Out New York

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The indelible experience of first love and the haunting presence of secrets that cannot be shared are the central issues in Starks probing, candid, often touching but somewhat overdesigned debut novel. At 23, butch lesbian Alta Corral still yearns over her former next-door neighbor and best friend, Sasha Shy Mallon. Six years ago, Shy suddenly fled their small Northern California town for Seattle. Alta, who was shocked at Shy's departure, remains bitter because, despite the intense intimacy they had shared, Shy has never contacted her. Though Alta has become a prominent participant in the San Francisco lesbian community (she rides a motorcycle, has shaved her head, works in a tattoo parlor and brings many women to her bed), she has not been able to forget Shy, and when her mother calls to say that Shy's mother is dying, Alta knows she must find her former lover and convince her to come home. When Shy does return, reluctantly, the women's reunion is both tender and contentious. Having decided not to identity herself as a lesbian, Shy has a boyfriend back in Seattle whom she may or may not marry and a baby on the way. Alta is unable to accept Shy's apparent sexual reversal, but what begins to take precedence over the unresolved troubles between them are the undisclosed secrets of the comatose Mrs. Mallon, who apparently fabricated her past. When Alta tries to interest Shy in uncovering her mother's true identity, she sees that her friend is an experienced accomplice at silence, at secrets, and she must find the answers alone. While the mystery of Mrs. Mallon's background adds drama and suspense to the narrative, it also seems schematic and is not entirely convincing. Stark's evocation of gay San Francisco will not be a novelty for readers of lesbian fiction. On the other hand, her refusal to let her characters mend the past tidily or sentimentally is impressive. At the end, the characters are wiser but not necessarily happier, and the ambiguities of their lives are unresolved.

Library Journal

Alta and Shy were each other's first lovers as teenagers. Estranged for five years and now in their early twenties, they have been brought together to tend to Shy's dying mother. They seem to have become polar opposites: Shy is pregnant and living with a man, Alta is a cartoonish San Francisco Nineties lesbian: a buzz-cut butch body piercer who has the femmes of the city at her feet. What is conveyed affectingly here is the dreadful limbo of terminal illness, where death comes not as a relief but as an anticlimax. Shy's mother has a terrifying past, the discovery of which is supposed to provide tension, but the lack of characterization and jarring shifts in time and perspective provide tension of a different, presumably unintended kind. This poorly edited effort by a first-time author should have incubated longer. Not recommended.--Ina Rimpau, Newark P.L., NJ Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A San Francisco-set debut graphically explores a young body-piercer's journey to self-acceptance and understanding, uncovering a mother's long-held secrets along the way. Stark's novel works best as an evocation of lesbian life; the message-driven plot itself, presumably intended to add gravitas by depicting the dangers of keeping silent, is less effective. Protagonist Alta Corral, who owns a motorbike, keeps her hair cropped, and seduces every available woman she comes across, begins the story when she learns that first love Sasha "Shy" Mallon's mother is dying. Alta has been close to Mrs. Mallon, who took her in when her own mother disowned her, and she recalls how Shy moved next door and became her best friend when she was seven. But there was something not quite right with the kind Mrs. Mallon, who was often depressed, ill, and, especially, fearful of her daughter being hurt. The girls became lovers in adolescence, until Shy inexplicably fled to Seattle. Now, married and pregnant, she's back in Alta's life once again. The two briefly reconnect, but Shy is haunted by what she learns about her mother, who dies soon after her arrival. It seems Mrs. Mallon was European and a Holocaust survivor who, though she kept her past hidden, was never able to forget it. The message is clear: keeping secrets or remaining silent about the past, or about one's sexuality, will lead only to trouble. Shy has tried to be heterosexual, denying her attraction to women (especially to Alta), and Mrs. Mallon tried to pass as a "normal" mother, keeping silent about her ruinous past. In both instances, however, the cost was high. Alta, understanding more about Shy and life, is content now to watch herbeloved move on and find her own way in the world. Strong writing undermined by a strained effort to be profound.