Whale Season ~ N.M. Kelby
This was a fun, quirky Florida read. I had never read Kelby before. I imagine I will look up her other titles. Though this story is set at Christmas time, it feels like Summer. A lot like living here.
There was a moment in the story where the proprietor of a strip club realizes that the disdain she feels for the men that 'should be home with their families on Christmas Eve' is misplaced... that these men are working on Christmas Eve for the sake of their families... regardless of the questionable nature of their chosen lunch spot.
Sometimes, I am like that... it takes me a long time to see what has been right in front of me all along... to see something familiar in a new, perhaps kinder perspective.
Or at least to choose to try to.
This book explained a lot. It brought Russo into sharper focus. Nothing revealed here felt like news... more like a clearing up of the facts, already established through his fiction. As he put so well in the book
"A writer needs to believe he's writing fiction- not thinly veiled biography"
Even when all signs point to the latter.
Another thing Russo did well- at least for me- was to bring a fairly unpalatable woman- not to a place where her iron will was excused or made any more appealing, rather to a spotlight where I asked myself " Am I really all that different from her myself?"
The jury is still out on that one, folks :)