Solo Spinout: Stories and a Novella - Hardcover

Nietzke, Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569470529 ISBN 13: 9781569470527

Publisher: Soho Pr Inc, 1996

Synopsis

A meticulous rendering of everyday life for Los Angeles women who live on the edge, an anthology of short fiction encompasses the novella "No Man's Land," as well as the stories "Jarring Light," "Los Angeles Here and Now," and "Solo Spinout."

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Mining John Updike's territory of vaguely bitter, contemplative middle-age, but from a clear-eyed female perspective, Nietzke's (the nonfiction Natalie on the Street, 1994) first collection offers the last word on burnt-out baby boomdom in southern California. The women in Nietzke's tales confront common dilemmas with a surly disregard for their presumed timelessness: Husbands have split, lesbianism has replaced straight domesticity, menopause looms. In the title story, Lili develops attachments to laundry and gin while considering the absence of her male lover. When he returns, abjectly, it's difficult to know whether she feels elated or merely reassured. ``Los Angeles Here and Now'' hinges on the accidental delivery of a cremated young surfer's ashes to a woman who, after she takes the remains to her grieving neighbor, finds herself sexually enticed by the woman's cool suffering. ``No Man's Land'' is a novella in the form of an extended, Proustian meditation, with a tennis racket returned by protagonist Corinne's ex-husband sparking her recollections of that failed marriage. Her husband, Jack, was just free of one marriage and considerably older than Corinne when they got hitched; now Jack is on wife number three, and Corinne has fallen in love with a woman. In fact, Corinne and Jack shared just two passions: one for tennis, the other for Lela, a willowy temptress who lures everyone toward sexual reckonings. With tennis as her main conceit, Nietzke uses contrasting playing styles--Corinne's is stolid and dependable, the younger Lela's slashing and aggressive--both to structure the narrative and explore the ways in which women who came of age in the 1960s have changed. With her unwavering eye for the foibles of L.A. utopianism and her tremendous grasp of social mores, Nietzke has been compared with Joan Didion. This book, however, is less reportage than a quiet feast of unforgettable characters. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

This cycle of stories, carefully honed and understated, covers some of the same psychological territory claimed by such writers as Ann Beattie. The narratives here dramatize the tepid despair and uncertainty of women adrift in L.A. In the title story, Lili dazedly moves from laundromat to bank to grocery store as she struggles to regain her footing in the wake of a traffic accident and the break-up with her boyfriend. In "Jarring Light," Nola is at loose ends: earthquake damage has shut down the library where she worked, and 11 days without cigarettes have frayed her nerves. She finds solace in memories and in the hallucinatory appearance of her late mother meditatively eating an avocado sandwich at the kitchen table. In "No Man's Land," the novella that closes the book, Corinne finds her relationship to her lover, Ginger, thwarted by memories of the past, specifically about Lea, the arrogant, charismatic lover who seduced Corinne only to leave her abruptly. These snapshots of women at points of transition are generally acute, although often rendered almost affectless by present-tense narration and a jaded fascination with the gaudy detritus of 20th-century life. The overlapping territory the stories explore makes one ruefully remember the therapist who scolds Corrine: "You're just running old tapes in your head."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Soho Pr Inc
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1569470529
• ISBN 13: 9781569470527
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 189