Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Bogeywoman (Vintage Contemporaries) (edition 2011)by Jaimy Gordon
Work InformationBogeywoman by Jaimy Gordon
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Bogeywoman, the third book by Jaimy Gordon I've read, is a compelling, intense, clever coming-of-age story told by Ursula, the self-named Bogeywoman, a very smart but very troubled teenage girl -- troubled most of all by her realization that she is a lesbian but determined to be one "Unbeknownst to Everybody" and to never even mention the word but represent it by a star symbol. Soon after she has gotten herself into a bit of a problem at summer camp and used a knife to write on her arms, she winds up in an upscale mental institution, a place where her fellow teenage inmates are mostly no more crazy than she is: no psychotics here, just children, with a few exceptions, who are too much for their rich parents to handle -- a girl who sleeps with every man she sees, a boy who takes every drug he can find, and so on. Eventually, a new and mysterious doctor arrives, Ursula falls in love and, as many of the book's subtitles proclaim, "love got me out of there." We as readers are inside Ursula's mind, and the book is full of her own language, words (often very funny) that she uses in place of the ones we know: psychiatrists are dreambox mechanics, for example, and men and boys are fuddies. It takes a little getting used to, as does the her combined fascination and disgust, as an adolescent, with bodily functions. For me, as with Gordon's Lord of Misrule (which I loved), the ending was a little forced, if not on the melodramatic side, but that's a quibble. It is Gordon's brilliance with words and language, her ability to subtly tie together different threads and themes, and Ursula's individuality, strength, and determination that make this an unusual but rewarding read. As a PS, for those who have read Lord of Misrule, Ursula is the sister of Maggie Koderer in that books, and a version of Maggie, as Margaret, is a secondary character in Bogeywoman. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesSun and Moon Classics (132)
A Los Angeles Times Best Book or the Year National Book Award Winner Jaimy Gordon's bold and daring coming of age novel combines the teenaged angst of Catcher in the Rye with the humor and tragedy of Girl, Interrupted. Ursie Koderer knows herself to be a monster--doomed to be different from other girls--very different. When she's discovered cutting herself at camp, she goes AWOL, and lands in a Baltimore psychiatric hospital. Ursie, now known as the Bogeywoman, joins up with the other misfits on the adolescent ward. They start a bughouse rock group, steal a nitrous oxide machine. As a mental patient Ursie is a success. But then she's implicated in the accidental burning of a friend. Locked away, the Bogeywoman meets the beautiful, mysterious Doctor Zuk, a woman psychiatrist from somewhere east of the Urals. Their affair is the main event in this gorgeous novel of love, crime, liberation, and flight to something like a new world. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNone
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
I loved LORD OF MISRULE, which had its own odd assortment of characters and special jargon of the racetrack world. But BOGEYWOMAN was a slog for me. Nothing much happens for the first couple hundred pages, but I forced myself to keep going and the action picked up a bit, but was so surreal as to be quite unbelievable - that Princess Bride element. This earlier work simply didn't pick up momentum the way LoM did. You can see the style similarities, but it was just plain slow going. I didn't hate the book, but it just wasn't that great. Not sure I would recommend it to the casual reader - or to anyone for that matter. ( )