Failure To Zigzag: A Novel
Vandenburgh makes a brilliant debut with this startlingly idiosyncratic, intelligent, funny and painfully moving novel. In Southern California in the late '50s and early '60s, Charlotte, daughter of wackily schizophrenic Katrinka, struggles in the toils of family madness for a normal life. When Katrinka repairs to mental hospital, Charlotte stays with her stodgy, repressive and yet crazily eccentric Republican grandparents, who provide little more fertile ground to flourish than did Katrinka, who, for all her charm and energizing wit, is surpassingly wretched as a mother. When Katrinka enters into a brief, improbable marriage, Charlotte is schlepped along to live an unkempt, disordered life in blue collar Redondo Beach and then, gypsy-like, in an Airstream mobile home while her mother works as a circus ventriloquist. With consummate artistry and by subtle indirection, the talented author reveals courage, misery and despair through sharp, flip dialogue, evoking the reader's empathy.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.