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Overview
“Fat with meaning . . . tastes oh so sinfully good.” —Washington Post Book World
Ever since the publication of Cowboys Are My Weakness, Pam Houston's fans have clamored for more from the woman with a penchant for the laconic men of the West. Now, in eleven linked fictions featuring a peripatetic photographer named Lucy O'Rourke, Houston serves up once more her charismatic blend of relationships and adventure. This is the story of one woman's struggle for balance in a world that keeps pitching and rolling under her feet. Dislocated geographically and spiritually, Lucy is prone to the wrong decisions at all the critical times; what's more, natural disasters just seem to find her: an accident on a rafting trip in Cataract Canyon, a grand cayman attack in the Amazon, a hurricane in the Gulf Stream-not to mention a few natural disasters in the form of men. A surprise encounter with Carlos Castenada convinces her that she isn't living the right life, and his cryptic message sends her back to her beloved Rocky Mountains. There, on a ranch, she takes comfort in animals, the jagged landscape of Colorado, and the sage advice of women friends; she even gives a man a try. Most important, for the first time she reconnects with parts of herself she didn't remember losing. "Pam Houston taps into our souls," one reader has said. "She could write my diary better than I can."
Editorials
Jon Krakauer
“Beautifully constructed sentences . . . peppered with observations that reveal us to ourselves in an unexpected, occasionally shocking light.”Karen Karbo
Houston's vigorous voice and lively take on what it's like to be a woman both physically bold and hopelessly romantic are to be cherished.—New York Times Book Review
Publishers Weekly -
The winningly forthright narrator of Houston's second collection of interlinked stories (after Cowboys Are My Weakness) is peripatetic landscape photographer Lucy O'Rourke, 33, who persists in falling in love with a succession of men who are wrong for her and in risking grievous bodily harm in adventure sports. Lucy is tossed into raging rapids on the Colorado River in Utah, faces down a grand cayman that almost capsizes her canoe in Ecuador, nearly drowns twice in the waters off the Bahamas in hurricane season and repeatedly tests her courage in other exotic locations. Each change of scene is a search for a home and a man with whom to establish it; each time, she is disappointed anew by neurotic lovers who are afraid of commitment. The unconscious motivation of all her adventures is the little girl she once was, caught between an alcoholic mother and a mean, bullying father. The 13 vignettes from her life, repetitive as they seem initially, move Lucy along a path on which she becomes open to mystical visions: the first is a visitation from Carlos Castaneda, which leads her to settle down at the dilapidated ranch her grandmother has bequeathed to her in the Colorado Rockies. Lucy's troubles are not over at the end of this suspenseful and plaintively appealing book, and her future is not entirely clear, yet the reader finally feels that she has learned valuable lessons that may take her to safe harbor. Houston describes Lucy's sporting adventures with cinematic detail, conveying both her technical prowess and the exhilaration of physical daring. On the other hand, readers may become exasperated at the number of selfish, foolish, posturing men who wander into Lucy's path. Her slow progress toward insight and peace of mind is wrapped up in a mystical epilogue that is rather contrived, but she is such an engaging heroine that one is left wanting to read further chapters in her life.Library Journal
In a series of linked vignettes, the reader visits different times and geographical locations in the life of photographer Lucy O'Rourke. As a single, 32-year-old woman from an abusive, alcoholic family, Lucy has some issues to work through. Fortunately, she has good friends to help her, and she meets more along the way. Lucy seems smart, well educated, and articulate in most areas, but when it comes to love, it's a different story. Her friend Henry appears to be right when he says she sets herself up to fail. When Lucy inherits her grandmother's Colorado ranch, she begins to confront herself and her past, and the reader is left with high hopes for a happy ending. Houston (Cowboys Are My Weakness, Norton, 1993) speaks to Everywoman in this novel. The dialog, the decisions, the choices, the questions--all are crafted with precision and with intricate and accurate detail. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/98.]--Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island, Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Watch HillLos Angeles Times
Houston's stories are so full of usable wisdom that she makes it seems like that's the least we should expect from the books we buy.Yahlin Chang
[A] wonderful new collection. . . .Book No. 3 awaits. -- NewsweekKaren Karbo
Houston's vigorous voice and lively take on what it's like to be a woman both physically bold and hopelessly romantic are to be cherished. -- The New York Times Book ReviewKirkus Reviews
An unconventional protagonist and vivid style are the distinguishing features of this nevertheless uneven second collection of 11 interrelated stories from Houston (Cowboys Are My Weakness). The central character and narrator here is thirtysomething Lucy O'Rourke, a landscape photographer with a penchant for physically challenging adventure (white-water canoeing, hanging with'glider pilots') and a history of romantic indecision and folly ('I always pick the wrong man. I'm kind of famous for it'). For example, her relationship with one promising male (Josh) is defined by finding who is the superior 'river runner.' Ergo: Lucy's encounters with men occur in such contexts as a storm off the coast of Bimini or a narrow escape, on an Ecuador river, from a vicious 'grand cayman.' Much of this is presented with impressive vigor, Houston is a fine descriptive writer and has a keen ear for crisp, give-and-take dialogue, and Lucy's present confusions are efficiently interwoven with complex memories of her uneasy detente with her 'difficult' parents (the title story, about their indulgent love for a pet cat, is a beauty). Still, the volume feels undeveloped, as if Houston were only hastily jotting down random observations about Lucy's tumultuous life and loves. The impression of uncertainty is deepened by a curious strain of faux-mysticism that threads weirdly through these stories: sonorous advice, for instance, offered by a Pakistani cabdriver in Manhattan; a chance meeting, at a California airport, with Carlos Castaneda (which 'tells' Lucy she must accept the Colorado ranch left her by her grandmother's will); and, in a tenuous 'Epilogue,' her inexplicable bonding with an agelessly wise (and utterly unbelievable) seven-year-old girl. There are gorgeous, arresting flashes of insight, color, and drama aplenty, but there isn't a book here. Houston remains a gifted writer who needs a subject.