Dylan Landis

‘Rainey Royal’ is a novel told in short stories using the same characters. In one, Rainey is 14; in another, she’s 18; the novel ends when she’s 25 and has become full owner of the building she grew up in. I cannot say that she was ‘brought up’ there, as she seems to have grown without any real adult supervision. Her mother left to live in an ashram when Rainey was young, getting in contact only twice a year. Her father, Howard, sells off everything in the house, even though it show more belongs to Rainey’s grandmother and will be Rainey’s when she’s 25. Her father’s best friend, Gordy, lives in the house and is a pedophile that comes into Rainey’s room every night and brushes her hair and gives her back massages that frequently include more than her back. The house is constantly filled with various musicians and groupies. It’s the 70s, so free love and drugs are rife in the house. Howard routinely seduces Rainey’s friends.

At first I didn’t care for Rainey or her best friend Tina. In their teens, these are the girls that other girls envy and fear. These are the girls who beat you up in the bathroom and are well versed in the effect their blooming sexuality has on males- especially grown men- and wield its power for their own amusement. But as Rainey grows you see how vulnerable she is despite presenting a hard personality to the world. There are reasons she acts out like she does. Tina is even more unpleasant at the beginning than Rainey is.

Oddly, given that the book is named for Rainey, the later stories move from Rainey’s POV to Tina’s and Leah’s (another friend). They grow a lot, too, over the course of the 11 years the book covers. In the end, I actually liked Tina, which surprised me. I thought it was an excellent book. It’s about young adults, but I wouldn’t class the book itself as YA. show less

For all the wildness of the story and the characters, there is a beautiful lightness to things in this book. Seeing pieces from one chapter track through several chapters later (Saint Catherine of Bologna, the cape, the teeth-licking trick, the parrot-boyfriend, and so many others) makes the reader feel like they're dropping in on old friends again and again, catching moments with them as we can - because this is a busy city. Rainey grows up (in her own way) over the ten-or-so years that show more this book spans, but we don't get to see the entire process. Instead, we experience just these stories, which might not even be the most momentous (although many are, or at least tie into momentous occasions) but are the stories that, if the reader were to go out and grab a drink to catch up with Rainey, she might tell us. Think about the stories you might tell, if you saw a friend maybe every six months or so - and then you'll see just how marvelous a novel this really is.

More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/09/29/rainey-royal/ show less

For all the wildness of the story and the characters, there is a beautiful lightness to things in this book. Seeing pieces from one chapter track through several chapters later (Saint Catherine of Bologna, the cape, the teeth-licking trick, the parrot-boyfriend, and so many others) makes the reader feel like they're dropping in on old friends again and again, catching moments with them as we can - because this is a busy city. Rainey grows up (in her own way) over the ten-or-so years that show more this book spans, but we don't get to see the entire process. Instead, we experience just these stories, which might not even be the most momentous (although many are, or at least tie into momentous occasions) but are the stories that, if the reader were to go out and grab a drink to catch up with Rainey, she might tell us. Think about the stories you might tell, if you saw a friend maybe every six months or so - and then you'll see just how marvelous a novel this really is.

More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/09/29/rainey-royal/ show less

This was a fun, artfully written book. I enjoyed it and was moved by it in the same way I might enjoy and be moved by a good music video. There was a lot of great rhythm in the language and a beautiful tension set up among the contrasting main characters, though they seemed drawn more to enhance the beat and forward motion of the story than the story drawn to deeply explore the ways in which they change. The retro setting was great.