Book Review: *Girls in Trucks* by Katie Crouch (guest post)

Today’s guest post is written by my friend, Michele.  She’s a SAHM of two young boys (one calls me “Miss Dawn”, the other calls me “Princess Lionheart” … I’m smitten!).  Now that her boys are a bit older, she finds herself with more “relatively free” time to enjoy reading.  On a recent visit she inspected my bookshelves and found a few treasures; read on to see what she has to say about Girls in Trucks.

Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

Paperback: 272 pages

Publisher: Back Bay Books (April 7, 2009)

ISBN-13: 978-0316002127

Back of the Book Blurb: Sarah Walters, the narrator of Girls in Trucks, is a reluctant Camellia Society debutante. She has always felt ill-fitted to the rococo ways of Southern womanhood and family, and is anxious to shake the bonds of her youth. Still, she follows the traditional path laid out for her. This is Charleston, and in this beautiful, dark, segregated town, established rules and manners mean everything.

But as Sarah grows older, she finds that her Camellia lessons fail her, particularly as she goes to college, moves North, and navigates love and life in New York. There, Sarah and her group of displaced deb sisters try to define themselves within the realities of modern life. Heartbreak, addiction, disappointing jobs and death fail to live up to the hazy, happy future promised to them by their Camellia mothers and sisters.

When some unexpected bumps in the road–an unplanned birth, a family death–lead Sarah back home, she’s forced to take another long look at the fading empire of her youth. It takes a strange turn of events to finally ground Sarah enough to make some serious choices. And only then does she realize that as much as she tried to deny it, where she comes from will always affect where she ends up. The motto of her girlhood cotillion society, “Once a Camellia, always a Camellia,” may turn out to have more wisdom and pull to it than she ever could have guessed.

Michele’s review: In Girls in Trucks, Katie Crouch’s debut novel, the main character Sarah Walters struggles with having grown up Southern and privileged, makes choices contrary to her parents’ wishes and often winds up fighting with herself as well.  It is a story that has been told many times before – the rebel who loses herself, in order to find herself – but the charm is in how Crouch chooses to spin her tale, mostly in first person narrative, and then every once in a while, a chapter is unexpectedly told in third.  It is a device that is used when events are difficult or painful, or to fill in the stories of secondary characters, helping the reader understand the bigger picture without the bias of the heroine’s opinion or emotions. It is unconventional, and yet completely effective.

Crouch begins the novel when Sarah is a pre-teen learning dance steps for her eventual debutante ball, and ends when she is in her early thirties.  Along the way we are introduced to lifelong friends, parents, boyfriends and love interests, as well as shown struggles with substance abuse and career choices – all of which help shape Sarah and the decisions she makes.  The story skips over large chunks of her life, and it often felt as if characters magically appeared in order to further the plot.  An example of this comes late in the story, when Sarah is nearing thirty, and decides to look up an old college roommate to rekindle an unconsummated affair.  The problem is that by the time we are introduced to him, that part of her life was never touched upon, and the reader is forced into a quick back-story in order to make him fit.

However, there is a lot of charm in the story.  The author exposes customs of Southern society that the characters must conform to or rebel against, for better or worse.  Most of these examples come through the relationships amongst the women in the story – mothers, daughters, sisters, friends – and how they respond to the demands of keeping their traditions.  The ties that keep them together are often for appearances sake, and one gets the sense that they sometimes don’t even like each other very much.  Still, when it comes to family, Sarah learns that she can always come home.  One of the best pieces of advice Sarah receives from her mother is “Never chase men or buses – another one will always come along”.

The story has some moments of real drama, liberal doses of comedy, and gives the reader an opportunity to become lost, if even for a little while, in the world of grits and gravy.  To call it Chick Lit is not an insult, this is a great effort by a new novelist that amuses and entertains.  Girls in Trucks is the perfect book to take to the beach or on summer vacation.