Tomato Girl

Julia Gibson persuades listeners to see the world through the eyes of 11-year-old Ellie, who voices her disgust at the idea of kissing, curiosity about Kotex, and a mix of guilt and confusion over her parents' behavior. Who wouldn't be confused? Gibson's portrayal of Ellie's bipolar mother is chilling--high-pitched and brassy one moment, distraught the next. Ellie's father's tone is even and mature, but his actions belie those traits when he hires a flirty teenager to help around the house and they begin an obvious affair. Gibson portrays Ellie's parents' increasing strangeness in equal measures with Ellie's growing bafflement. Balance comes with Gibson's description of tender caretakers who underscore Ellie's innocence and hope. This normalcy keeps listeners engaged in the face of a preponderance of eccentric characters and bizarre behaviors. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

May 12, 2008
The absorbing, unsettling debut from Pupek centers on 11-year-old Ellie Sanders, who has already seen a lot of heartache in her short, rural mid-20th-century Virginia childhood. Her beautiful but troubled mother, Julia, who today would probably be diagnosed as bipolar, has frequent outbursts necessitating restraints and horse tranquilizers, administered by Ellie's father, Rupert. When a pregnant Julia suffers a bad fall, Rupert uses the incident to bring home more trouble, in the form of Tess, the teenage “tomato girl” who supplies his general store with home-grown produce. Intended as a caretaker for Julia and Ellie (and a bedmate for himself), Tess, who has troubles of her own, instead initiates a series of increasingly horrific events that leaves the family irreversibly altered. Issues of racial and religious intolerance are touched on lightly, but the real focus of this accomplished debut is the fatalistic accounting of the events engulfing Ellie. Although Ellie's voice is not always consistent with her youth, she's an effective narrator whose storytelling naïveté nicely underscores her innocence.