Review: A Connecticut girl in Georgia
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 11, 2012
"When people talk about the South being haunted, it's true.  But it's not the places that are haunted, it's the people.  They are trapped by all the stories of the past..."  (Location 89)The narrator of "This is Not a Love Story" by Lydia Peelle is a woman whose daughter has gone off to college and she is looking back on her youth because of some old photos that her daughter found while packing.When she was twenty-two, our narrator left Connecticut and went to a small town in Georgia to start what she thought would be a lifelong career as a photographer.  She saw the South as "raw and dangerous and full of relics of a long-gone era." (Loc 34) Despite her lack of creativity, what the South offered would more than make up for anything she might lack.  As many often do, she wished later on that she had listened to family's and friend's advice.  Finding Tommy, twice her age, was great fun in the beginning.  Tommy lived on a boat on the lake and didn't work, had parties all the time and drank a lot.  And the nights in Valdosta looking for Tommy in the bars started to get to her.  The title of the story is right.This is a very well-written short story and is the first of this author's writing that I have read.  There is an anthology with more of Peelle's short stories in it which I would like to read.  What happens in the story is believable and realistic and the characters are well-thought out and seem authentic.Highly recommended.