Tomato Girl

During Nanowrimo 2008, Karen Harrington posted an article that Janet Finch wrote to encourage participants, “Dear Author - ‘Make Trouble for Your Characters.’ “ Jayne Pupek did just that for Ellie Sanders, an adolescent girl growing up in a home with a mentally ill mother. Ultimately, she is the one who suffers when her father’s will to fight for his family is lost when Rupert chooses to have an affair with Tess, a local young woman known to all as the Tomato Girl. From that point forward, things quickly get messier and uglier for Ellie each day. One thing after another kicks her into the dirt and she has no one to help her but herself. With all that she experiences during the months that the Tomato Girl engulfs her family, show more will Ellie find the courage, the heart, and the hope to go on?

Ellie is a troubled girl. Her father, once her stronghold, brings Tess home to live with them after her mother fell down the stairs and is hospitalized. Her mother is either bi-polar or is a manic-depressive (my diagnosis). Ellie blames her mother’s accident on herself because she chose going to her daddy’s store to see the new baby chicks instead of going down into the basement to get something for her mother. Julia was in, who was pregnant, was in a good place before the accident, but that all changed when she found out about Tess. Ellie knows how to work with her father to handle her mother to keep her as happy as possible, she doesn’t know how to deal with Tess or her parents with another woman in the middle. She is unsafe and insecure. Most of all, she is virtually alone because there is only so much dysfunction that an outsider, especially another child with a disapproving mother, can handle. So, what Rupert did out of exhaustion and a selfish desire to feel alive kicked off a tragic series of events that could not be stopped from trampling Ellie.

I truly love and care for Ellie. She is a young girl who does her best to hold herself and her family together. It is unfair to her that her mother’s health and welfare is placed squarely upon her shoulders. It is difficult to imagine a positive outcome for her. She must be strong to overcome her life’s circumstances and it is difficult to stay strong in the face of so much death, neglect, and the horrific inner workings of her mother’s inner world. What made this novel so difficult for me to believe were Rupert’s actions. This novel takes place in Virginia during the mid-20th century. Not much was known about mental illness, but it is hard to understand how a historically warm and loving parent would leave his child alone in that situation. I can understand wanting to escape a difficult life. I can’t understand going from one horrible situation to the other. There might not have been many other romantic options for him where he was, but Tess was no prize. Her past and her own known medical condition made getting involved with her a bad bet and he was gambling with Ellie’s life. I found his choices unforgivable, especially after the discovery he makes in the family’s cellar.

Reading Tomato Girl was anxiety inducing. It was very well written, but I could only read so much in a single sitting. I was continually waiting for the other hammer to fall on Ellie and it always did faster and harder than I anticipated. This made the novel compelling, but there were places where Ellie’s hard knocks felt gratuitous. A girl’s first menstrual cycle is a right of passage, but I felt that the manner in which it occurs and how it is discovered by others was unnecessary. I also found the storyline surrounding Ellie’s brother was just a little too bizarre after the local police got involved. The aftermath of that plot twist never felt as true to me as the rest of the novel.

Tomato Girl tells the story of what happens when a child is forced to be the parent. It is an unnatural state. Although not always successful for me, I found Ellie to be a most compelling character. Jayne Pupek captured life in a small Southern town very well. The supporting characters, specifically those who loved and cared for Ellie more than her own family, added touches of charm that were almost more important to the reader than they are for Ellie. It is enough to give the reader hope that Ellie won’t end up like Aileen Wuornos or worse. I would both recommend reading Tomato Girl and following it up with a light-hearted novel. You’ll need it.

http://literatehousewife.com/2009/02/139-tomato-girl/ show less

Pupek, Jayne. Tomato Girl. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2008.

What a beautifully written, tragic first book! The characters are so true to life and so compelling I was picturing them in a movie. It's told in first person from the point of view of 11 year old Ellie. With the help of a series of seamless recollections Ellie recounts her life with a mentally ill mother and a cheating father. Ellie's father is taken with, and soon overcome by, a teenage girl who delivers tomatoes to the store he manages. From the moment the "tomato girl" comes into Ellie's life every day is stacked with another unbelievable tragedy, a level of sadness leading to horror much deeper than the one before. It is hard to imagine the amount of pain this child has show more to endure at such a tender age. Pupek writes with sentences full of foreshadowing. They hang heavy like dark clouds, bloated with the storm that will erupt any minute.
My only complaint is absence of addressing molestation. Ellie is "grabbed" by boy hard enough to leave a bruise. At the same time her period has started (her first). When Sherrif Rhodes discovers the blood, and Ellie tells him of the rough boy, the Sheriff doesn't take Ellie to a hospital to be examined by a real doctor. She is brought to a black woman who practices witchcraft. Because the story is set in the late 60's and racism is hinted at I was surprised Sherriff Rhodes would bring a child to her rather than the local hospital. This is the only oddity in the story I wish was explained a little better. show less

I loved the writing in this novel. The voice was authentic and all the characters came to life for me, especially Ellie who I wanted to rescue and her mother who I wanted to bring to the doctor and get her some medication! And I just wanted to shake Rupert by the shoulders and ask him "What are you thinking?". I liked that the author tackled tough subjects that were not to be spoken of during the time setting of the novel, like mental illness (bi-polar), adultery, incest, racism. I applaud her for covering the subject of stillbirth in such a unique and horrifying way. I could relate on a deeply personal level with the mother. Having this happen to you even if you're mentally stable can make you crazy, so I could see how this event was show more the ultimate catalyst to her final downward spiral.


I liked the metaphors and innuendos used in the novel. Like, when Mr. Morgan didn't want to smoke in Ellie's house, he said, "A woman can always tell when something in her house is amiss." Love that!
Other favorites: "But the words nobody said were like oily fingers staining everything.
"If I could have one wish at that moment it would be to see Tess disappear like a snowflake touching warm ground."
"When you love somebody, the words you need come as sure and easy as rain."

I went back and forth between feeling sorry for Rupert and Tess and despising them. They were dealt some bad luck, but were they really handling it the best they could? I could see how Tess just wanted to get out of her house, but when she packed that dress for Ellie's mother... That was just plain evil!

My only criticisms are that I would have liked to have seen more of Clara. And after a while I began thinking how much more can this poor girl take, but I don't necessarily think that the events were over the top.

I look forward to reading more of Jayne Pupek's novels in the future! show less

Review for Early Reviewers program of www.LibraryThing.com

This is one intense novel. Not since I read Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons (also from Algonquin Press) have I read a story so terrible, so graphic, so intense, and so absorbing. I started to read on Sunday, but had to stop after the first chapter for an unexpected short trip for lunch with some family members. On Monday afternoon, I started over, and could hardly put it down. With 40 (of 300 pages) left, I stopped at 11 last night completely exhausted. To say this novel is a “page-turner” is to elevate the term beyond the meaning I always associated with it – an interesting, thrilling beach read where the hero gets the girl/guy, and they sail off into the sunset putting some show more hair-breadth escapes behind them. Tomato Girl has none of those elements.

This novel is like a vacuum – not the Hoover kind, but the absolute space vacuum that sucks all the breath, blood, and life right out of the reader. True, I could not put it down, but I did hold my breath as I turned many pages.

Eleven-year old Ellie lives with her father and mother in, what at first seems to be a “white-picket fence” existence. Only a few hints of dark clouds float in that first chapter, but the story builds like a distant hurricane that approaches the shore. Rupert, Ellie’s dad, manages a local general store. Something seems not right with Julie, Ellie’s mother, and when she falls down the cellar stairs, she is hospitalized for a few days. This is when the family unravels, and Ellie is forced to handle too much, to keep too many secrets, to witness much more than any 11-year-old ought to.

The novel is told from Ellie’s point of view, and she grows into a woman in a matter of weeks. Her decisions and choices always seem right, but somehow fate or circumstances sometimes interfere. Pupek has captured, in a consistent and completely believable manner, the mind of a young girl on the cusp of her teen years.

The only sour note for me was the character Clara, a local woman, who lives in the “wrong” part of town and befriends Ellie. This woman has magic, clairvoyance, and the
ability to raise a dead chicken. She does comfort Ellie, and she imparts some important lessons, but she could easily have done all that without candles, sprinkled salt, or buried menstrual blood.

Jayne Pupek has written an incredible first novel. Definitely not for children, the squeamish, or the faint of heart, but I give this novel 5 solid gold stars.

--Jim, 7/8/08 show less

I expected to relate to this story but was unsure about how much I'd enjoy the telling of it. Like Ellie I was once an eleven year old girl with overwhelming responsibilities and an unpredictable parent who needed more help than I could offer. But I really loved this book. The voice of this girl rang true for me, with all her hopes and fears. Children as protagonists or narrators in adult novels don't always impress me as real. Ellie was exactly right.
This book will sit proudly on my shelf with Ellen Foster and Me & Emma, the two other books whose little girls have stuck me as totally believable. While Ellen Foster is older and more precocious, and Carrie is younger and more confused, eleven year old Ellie in Tomato Girl is a very show more normal girl. But she is helpless from a combination of neglect and more responsibility than most adults can cope with. In fact it is her own father who saddles her with taking care of an unstable mother, something he himself cannot always handle appropriately. Ellie just wants to be part of a normal family and is never quite sure of herself.
Tomato girl is a touching story, about adults distracted by their own problems and desires while a young girl grows up trying to navigate the convoluted and unpredictable ways of adult behaviour. Sad in places, but uplifting too, it is a delightful story and one that I will read again. One of my favourite novels of 2008. I recommend it highly. Five stars. show less

Ellie is 11 years old, it’s nearly Easter and she’s excited about finally being able to take home one of the chicks from her father’s store. A sunny beginning, to be sure, but there are dark clouds on the horizon. Her mother’s behavior is increasingly erratic, and when she falls down the stairs and is admitted to the hospital, her father brings home the teenage “tomato girl” to help take care of things and things steadily go from bad to worse.

Since the book is told from innocent Ellie’s point of view, a lot of the clues that adults pick up as to what is actually going on (her father’s affair, the police taking advantage of her mentally insane mother, etc.) sail over her head. As the narrative progresses, it’s show more heartbreaking to have to see how events gradually cause Ellie to lose her innocence and force to her to grow up way too fast. Despite Ellie’s age, this is not a book for middle or YA readers (though more mature teens who seek out intense, challenging literature could handle it).

This novel is not in any way high concept (my favorite type of book) and most definitely does not fall in the thriller genre, but it sucked me in so completely that I lost track of time and read compulsively until I turned the last page. It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly what makes it so great - certainly the sure, authentic voice and the sympathetically rendered characters – but there is some intangible magic to it which every writer hopes to achieve and every reader longs to discover. Thanks to the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program for allowing me to discover this one. show less

Jayne Pupek's first novel, Tomato Girl, tells the story of Ellie Sanders, an eleven year old coping with a mentally ill mother and a father who leaves her and her mother for a teenaged vegetable seller.

Tomato Girl is undoubtedly well written, and I remained interested enough in the story to finish the book, but I did not feel emotionally invested in any of the characters, not even Ellie. I felt that there was too much going on - the characters have so many issues that the end result is that none of the issues are fully addressed so I was never sure if I was supposed to care. I felt very distant throughout.

I also had a hard time dating the story, as mentioned in another review. Until the date was mentioned at 1969, I had thought it was show more the late 1950's.

While Tomato Girl was not as captivating as I had hoped, it was not dreadful either. I can see why others would like it, as it is definitely in the 'Crazy in Alabama, Bastard Out of Carolina' category. It just was not my cup of tea. show less