This riveting (fictional) account of a woman's coping with her boyfriend's suicide can be dark, but its never trite or sappy, deeply affecting, and at the end, inspiring.
The protagonist is an aspiring actress, and there's one chapter dealing with turning pain into art that is absolutely stunning. ( )

Josie is an art model and an actor in student films in LA. She meets Michael, a student, when she poses for an art class on The Human Form. She finds out he is a talented artist who is the son of a famous concert pianist, but little else. After living together for a year and a half, he tells her he "needs some space," and takes off. A week later, she is notified by the coroner, who found her name in a suicide note he left, that he blew his brains out in a motel room 3 hours East of LA. For the rest of the book, Josie follows through hints he left, finding out more and more, realizing she'd never known who the boy was that she thought she loved.

This author uses language lovingly, brutally, shaping it like clay in her hands, mapping her characters' hearts, souls, the emotions like a labyrinth, untangling the ugly, lonely, desperate human psyche like a tangled ball of yarn. Just an amazing talent. ( )

2.5*

This book was difficult to get through, and I believe a large part of that was how difficult it was to connect with any of the characters. They felt so removed from every day life that I could not identify with any of them. I am also not sure if I missed it, if I should have had the knowledge entering into the book, or if it was in fact never mentioned, but I did not understand why Josie and Michael could not be together.

I got the sense that the book was set several decades in the past, which is fine, but I do not think that was conveyed well. If that was in fact the case, then the divide between the Tyrell and Loewry families is more believable. Another problem that I had with the book was how little I felt I learned about Michael. From the summary of the novel, I thought it was going to be a book about Meredith and Josie going through a journey of togetherness because of their mutual relationship with Michael. However, that is not what I got at all.

I really enjoyed White Oleander, and I felt like the two books had a lot of commonalities, however, I would not recommend this book to many people.


****spoilers below this line****
First of all, Meredith and Josie never actually get along. The only highlights of the book were when they were fighting over something that was "just in Josie's imagination." Although, I assure you, she was not imagining anything. Furthermoore, the book ends with Josie finding some semblance of closure over Michael's death, and it has nothing to do with Meredith. This was extremely disappointing because the book is not marketed as such. To me, that is a completely different type of novel than what I thought I was getting into. I also do not think that was done well either. ( )

She writes with brilliant insight that gives her characters a lifelike dimension, enough that even if you have nothing in common with them you can still sympathize with their struggles. ( )

A great modern coming-of-age story, full of heart-wrenching up and downs. I thought this was a excellent book but this is my first Janet Fitch novel, so I'm not sure how it compares with her other stuff.

Josie is a teenaged runaway who has worked her way into the rock and art scene in Los Angeles in the 80s. She models for artists and does parts in student films, and she is hopelessly in love with her well-off, Harvard-dropout struggling artist boyfriend, Michael. Completing this triangle is Michael's mother Meredith, a controlling well-known pianist who has practically disowned Michael for living with Josie, someone she sees as not good enough for him. When Michael is found dead after a suicide less than one chapter into the book, Josie is forced to face life (and Meredith) after her world comes crashing down.

This is definitely a book I will end up reading over and over again through the years because I admire and relate to the character of Josie so much. While she does turn to drugs and alcohol to console her pain, I see her as a brave soul who ends up choosing life over endless sorrow in the end, especially after she visits the motel where her boyfriend killed himself. I liked how the reader never really “met” Michael, but rather Michael’s character was memories that Josie and the other characters had of him. It makes Michael seem more distant and complex, leaving the other characters to create their own impressions of him for the reader.

SPOILER ALERT:
However, the only things I was annoyed with was the part about Meredith and Michael possibly being lovers and the ending – the reason I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5. The speculation on Josie’s part about Meredith raping Michael seems a bit out of reach and too forceful. The maid never confirms or denies it when Josie asks her but I felt like this bad allegation against Meredith was just there to make the reader dislike her. In addition, I thought the ending was a little too blasé, Josie reading the notebook her boyfriend left behind and “saving” the girl who found him dead and taking her back to Los Angeles. It felt very abrupt, like throughout the book there was all this pain and hurt and then all of a sudden, after reading the notebook, she knew it wasn’t her that drove him to kill himself but his own inner demons and that was where her pain stopped. I’m not sure how it could have ended differently, but I just wasn’t happy with it. ( )