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Gloria (HarperFlamingo $27)
In his eighth novel, Gloria (HarperFlamingo $27), Maillard re-visits his Lucky Strike American youth to profile a neurotic intellectual who hides behind the façade of a clothes-horse debutante. Despite being chosen as Prom Queen and president of her exclusive sorority, and despite her straight-A average, Gloria Cotter struggles to hide her real self, "a queer, neurotic, terrified, hollow, poetry-reading priss -- the biggest misfit in the Delta Lambda.";
Daughter of a steel-mill executive and engaged to a handsome tennis player, Gloria becomes a reluctant expert at preening and learns the Mona Lisa smile to hide her insecurities. She's a meticulous keeper of diaries, but she can't bear to write down the thoughts of her conscience. "...you'll never really fit in, not in your heart, because you're irrevocably different from those girls. You're a strange, dark Gypsy girl. No one knows you, and no one ever will.";
Gloria's mother, Laney, hates her aging body and her life in the "crude, ugly, stupid town"; of Raysburg, wishing she could go back to New York. She resents her daughter's youth. Gloria's father, Ted, a Lieutenant Commander in the second World War, works six-and-a-half days a week as vice-president of Raysburg Steel. His life would be perfect if only he had that bomb shelter built.
It's a novel that delves into deep and commonplace American insecurities. Typically, as the steel company's youngest vice-president, Gloria's father worries about eating a hotdog at the Fourth of July lawn party.
"He had the familiar, thoroughly enjoyable tingle at the back of his neck that told him he'd had a bit too much to drink on an empty stomach and should eat something fast; what he wanted was a hotdog, but he couldn't bring himself to ask for one. Right beside the hotdogs were big slabs of prime beef; they were coming off the grill perfectly cooked, dripping blood, and they were what you were supposed to eat if you were the senior vice-president of the Raysburg Steel Corporation.
"Ted could eat a steak - would even enjoy eating it - but ever since he'd been a kid, he'd always loved hotdogs. Damn, he could almost taste the relish. But if he ate a hotdog, the boys might think he was a dumb old farmer with no class. Or maybe not. Maybe they'd just think it was a funny, endearing quirk, just like he'd thought about Admiral Delrick and his fondness for licorice.";
Always the fraud amongst girls wearing girdles and their boyfriends' fraternity pins, Gloria finds inspiration from Eliot, Roethke and Yeats. She finds herself the only girl invited to professor Bolton's "notorious Thursday night bull sessions"; at the Blue Cellar
tavern. Gloria's carefully constructed world comes apart the summer after she graduates from college.
Gloria must face the reality of her father's smoke-spewing mills and her nightmares of Billy Dougherty, her father's old navy buddy. "Billy had never lost something of the perpetual boy - maybe it was his winsome, lop-sided grin or his habit of rubbing the back of his neck and looking off to one side as though he were about to say, 'Aw, shucks, ma'am,' in a Jimmy Stewart Voice..."; Billy's insistence on calling Gloria "princess"; - a name only her father calls her - becomes disconcerting when Gloria catches him watching her.
"She pulled off her bathing cap, began to towel her hair, and caught Mr. Dougherty staring at her, his eyes fixed on the point where her bathing suit met the top of her thighs... When she'd first met him, he'd told her to call him Uncle Billy, but Gloria, who had been fourteen at the time, was not about to call any man who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere Uncle anything.";
0-99-990329-2 -- by Jeremy Twigg
[BCBW SUMMER 1999]
Daughter of a steel-mill executive and engaged to a handsome tennis player, Gloria becomes a reluctant expert at preening and learns the Mona Lisa smile to hide her insecurities. She's a meticulous keeper of diaries, but she can't bear to write down the thoughts of her conscience. "...you'll never really fit in, not in your heart, because you're irrevocably different from those girls. You're a strange, dark Gypsy girl. No one knows you, and no one ever will.";
Gloria's mother, Laney, hates her aging body and her life in the "crude, ugly, stupid town"; of Raysburg, wishing she could go back to New York. She resents her daughter's youth. Gloria's father, Ted, a Lieutenant Commander in the second World War, works six-and-a-half days a week as vice-president of Raysburg Steel. His life would be perfect if only he had that bomb shelter built.
It's a novel that delves into deep and commonplace American insecurities. Typically, as the steel company's youngest vice-president, Gloria's father worries about eating a hotdog at the Fourth of July lawn party.
"He had the familiar, thoroughly enjoyable tingle at the back of his neck that told him he'd had a bit too much to drink on an empty stomach and should eat something fast; what he wanted was a hotdog, but he couldn't bring himself to ask for one. Right beside the hotdogs were big slabs of prime beef; they were coming off the grill perfectly cooked, dripping blood, and they were what you were supposed to eat if you were the senior vice-president of the Raysburg Steel Corporation.
"Ted could eat a steak - would even enjoy eating it - but ever since he'd been a kid, he'd always loved hotdogs. Damn, he could almost taste the relish. But if he ate a hotdog, the boys might think he was a dumb old farmer with no class. Or maybe not. Maybe they'd just think it was a funny, endearing quirk, just like he'd thought about Admiral Delrick and his fondness for licorice.";
Always the fraud amongst girls wearing girdles and their boyfriends' fraternity pins, Gloria finds inspiration from Eliot, Roethke and Yeats. She finds herself the only girl invited to professor Bolton's "notorious Thursday night bull sessions"; at the Blue Cellar
tavern. Gloria's carefully constructed world comes apart the summer after she graduates from college.
Gloria must face the reality of her father's smoke-spewing mills and her nightmares of Billy Dougherty, her father's old navy buddy. "Billy had never lost something of the perpetual boy - maybe it was his winsome, lop-sided grin or his habit of rubbing the back of his neck and looking off to one side as though he were about to say, 'Aw, shucks, ma'am,' in a Jimmy Stewart Voice..."; Billy's insistence on calling Gloria "princess"; - a name only her father calls her - becomes disconcerting when Gloria catches him watching her.
"She pulled off her bathing cap, began to towel her hair, and caught Mr. Dougherty staring at her, his eyes fixed on the point where her bathing suit met the top of her thighs... When she'd first met him, he'd told her to call him Uncle Billy, but Gloria, who had been fourteen at the time, was not about to call any man who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere Uncle anything.";
0-99-990329-2 -- by Jeremy Twigg
[BCBW SUMMER 1999]
Submitted on July 9, 2003 in By David.
