Myrtle of Willendorf - Hardcover

Rebecca O'Connell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1886910529 ISBN 13: 9781886910522

Publisher: Front Street imprint of Boyds Mills Press, 2000

Synopsis

College isn't much more fun for Myrtle than high school was. At least in high school she had her weird friend Margie, who wasn't going to win any popularity contests or beauty pageants either. Now an art student at college, Myrtle has only food and her sense of humor to rely on. Her roommate, Jada, with her boyfriend and her long neck and her dancer's body and her healthy eating habits, is no help at all. Over the course of a few painful weeks in summer, Myrtle finds a path, discovering, through her painting and a prehistoric stone figure known as the Venus of Willendorf, a new sense of self and a different kind of beauty.

About this title

About the Author:

Rebecca Ben Zvi O'Connell grew up in Indiana, PA. She graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with a degree in psychology. At Penn State she took a non-credit class called Women's Mysteries, which was a little bit like the coven in Myrtle of Willendorf. Rebecca attended the University of Pittsburgh's School of Library Science on a full scholarship. She is a librarian in Pittsburgh, PA, where she lives with her husband and son.

From Publishers Weekly:

Often witty and even more often provocative, this first novel is arresting despite its flaws. About to enter her sophomore year of college, narrator Myrtle is seriously overweight. As she tries to achieve some form of self-acceptance, she ruminates on her estrangement from her high school friend, Margie, a would-be coven leader who advocates Goddess worship. "Before God was a pale, thin man," Margie says, holding up a copy of the Venus of Willendorf, "people worshipped a robust, bountiful woman." At the other extreme is Myrtle's current roommate, Jada, who needs two hours to groom herself every morning and tries to "recruit [Myrtle] into her cosmetic cult." Jada is rarely without her handsome boyfriend, and Myrtle twice has the misfortune of walking in on their sexual encounters, including an elaborately and hilariously referenced oral sex act. An aspiring painter, Myrtle enters a racy drawing of Jada's boyfriend at a campus caf? then overhears Jada's friends ridiculing her. When one calls her a "lesbo," Myrtle's hurt and anger precipitate a revelation. Myrtle's voice is thoroughly compelling, even when she revels in her most disgusting habitsAas in her extended, loving description of biting her fingernails and toenailsAand even though the resolution comes too easily. However, for all Myrtle's fleshiness, she is not fully realized. She seems to have no family, and no life off the small stage that O'Connell shows us. But it testifies to O'Connell's talents that she leaves readers wanting more, not less, of her oversize heroine. Ages 12-up. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Front Street imprint of Boyds Mills Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1886910529
• ISBN 13: 9781886910522
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128