Alice Fantastic

March 23, 2009
Estep’s entertaining fifth novel features three women—half-sisters Alice and Eloise and their ex-junkie mother, Kimberly—navigating relationships, a half-dozen lovers and innumerable dogs. Alice, the elder sister, is a professional gambler and prefers to keep an emotional distance from her lovers. Things go wrong, however, when she attempts to shake off her latest boyfriend, Clayton; to her dismay, she finds she cares for “the big oaf.” Meanwhile, Eloise, whose boyfriend recently died, gets involved with the glamorous actress Ava Larkin, whom Kimberly met while walking some of the 17 rescued dogs she shelters. After Alice discovers a secret that Kimberly has been harboring, she and her sister are confronted with the need to transform their apparently coldhearted ways. Unfortunately, as the novel progresses, it loses the witty energy of its zinger first chapter, and, as compared to Estep’s adventuresome characters, the conventional nature of Kimberly’s secret disappoints. Nevertheless, Estep (Hex
) captures the wily spirit of a woman more inclined to give her heart to a dog than to another person.

March 15, 2009
Family is open to definition for three wildly unconventional women, their assorted lovers and a pack of rescue dogs.

Alice is a professional gambler, a loner with a serious knowledge of horseflesh. She's debating whether to kick her latest lover, Clayton (aka"the big oaf"), to the curb when he more or less accidentally kills someone. Alice's half-sister Eloise, both damaged and beautiful, makes strange stuffed animals that are only one manifestation of her curious intelligence. Their mother Kimberley could almost pass for the most normal of the three. A former wild girl, she is now living a clean and sober life in bucolic Woodstock, N.Y., where she looks after a motley assembly of unwanted dogs, several of which she palms off on her NYC-based daughters. When a series of crises brings Alice and Eloise to their mother's Catskills retreat, they find more than a few surprises. The previously lesbian Kimberley has taken up with a male neighbor. She's also started working for a local movie star, Ava, who takes a shine to the previously straight Eloise. Kimberley gives her daughters a shocker of a revelation that causes them to reconsider relationships and the few life plans they'd made. Estep (Flamethrower, 2006, etc.) brings her distinctive characters to lusty life with funny, profane prose. The emotional payoff, when it comes, is both warm and somehow wildly funny.

Fresh and surprisingly real.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 15, 2009
In this engaging novel, Estep, a poet and poetry jam performer and author of the Ruby Murphy mystery series (e.g., "Flamethrower"), peeks into the lives of three women, their lovers, and their dogs. Alice, mid-thirties and a professional gambler, is trying to break up with Clayton, her big oaf of a boyfriend who just won't take a hint. Her younger half-sister, Eloise, a designer of stuffed animals, is recovering from the sudden death of her lover, a trapeze instructor. She didn't like him all that much, but still]. Their mother, Kimberly, has been finding love with women lately, but her strongest attachment is to the injured and abandoned dogs she rescues, and she frequently foists dogs upon her daughters for fostering. The women were never close, but as the novel takes them through some action-packed months, with changes in lovers, assorted tragedies and mishaps, secrets uncovered, and an ever-changing cast of canines, they come to realize what they mean to one another and that maybe there are needs another human can fill better than a dog can. Edgy in parts, touching in others, but always entertaining.Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll. Lib.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2009
Few will be able to resist Esteps blend of barely controlled lunacy-cum-pathos and reconciliation in which fiftysomething Kimberly lives in Woodstock with her live-in lover, Betina, whos given to misdosing her psychotropic meds and standing naked in the living room. There are also Kimberlys 17 rescued dogs, and Eloise and Alice, her thirtysomething single daughters. Eloise, awarded a large settlement resulting from her fall into an open manhole, designs bizarre toys, such as cats heads on cockroach bodies, and is heartbroken over Billy. Alice is a professional racetrack gambler whose lover no longer lives in their van now that hes imprisoned. One day Kimberly meets gorgeous movie star Ava, who hires her as an assistant, and before you can say sudden switch, Eloise and Ava are an item, while Kimberly finds unexpected love, and Alice takes up with William, who turns out to be, well, you get the idea. If everything is cosmically connected, then its especially so in Esteps surreal, sad, and sweet world, which is well worth a visit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)