Bloody Mary

July 1, 2003
Claire Winger seems to have it all. She loves her job as a pediatric oncology nurse and is happily married to Leo, an ophthalmologist. Her elder daughter, Nora, makes good grades, runs track, and plays the violin. Though 13-year-old Hadley has yet to come into her own, she sometimes demonstrates a wisdom beyond her years. Then, suddenly, everything starts to spin out of control. Claire has her first seizure since childhood yet remains in denial, and Hadley can't decide whether she should continue trying to fit in or cultivate a persona of indifference. Soon both mother and daughter are caught up in a spiral of bad decision-making: Claire begins an affair and sinks slowly into self-indulgence, while Hadley walks out of a slumber party and into the world of street kids. Alternating between Claire's first-person narrative and Hadley's story, told in the third person, this first novel by the author of the acclaimed story collection Blood and Milk leaves the reader with much to ponder. Recommended for both public and academic libraries.-Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2003
In award-winning short story writer Solwitz's fresh and riveting debut novel, a group of Chicago seventh-grade girls stare into a mirror and chant "Bloody Mary" in the hope of conjuring up a vision of horror, but actual blood and terror come all too readily into the lives of 13-year-old Hadley and her mother, Claire. A pediatric nurse married to an eye doctor, Claire is suddenly stricken with epilepsy, and its traumatic disorientations induce her to embark on an affair. Distracted by her own erotic awakening, Claire isn't there for her daughter when she has her first period. Hurt and confused, Hadley disappears, seemingly into thin air, but her hideout--a crummy basement apartment where a sexually predatory man gives shelter to runaways--is just 10 blocks away from her gentrified street. In a harrowing, acutely revealing, and masterfully orchestrated paralleling, both mother and daughter find themselves shipwrecked on unfamiliar and treacherous psychological and sexual terrain. As they struggle to regain control of themselves and their lives, Solwitz dramatizes with incandescent intensity and profound insight the great mysteries of body and soul, the axis between wildness and responsibility, and the painful, lifelong evolution of the self.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)