The following review appeared on the blog Peppermint Ph.D.
You can find the full article here: Peppermint Ph.D.
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Bridget Hoida has also generously donated another copy of So L.A. to another Peppermint Ph.D. reader so next Friday, August 24, I’ll choose two winners 🙂
Golden Lines
But contrary to the advice of seismologists, L.A. is virtually made of glass, its reflective surfaces sweeping and expansive, and so Junah was with me everywhere I went.
Puck and a drink or two is how I get through parties.
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Jameson up, I said, looking at his salty hair and wondering if my instinct to push it out of his eyes meant I was ready to be a mom. And a tall glass of gin with a straw and some ice so it looks like a Sprite.
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Unlike Puck I didn’t mind being from a dusty place that sold Hydraulic Harvesters instead of Maseratis. In fact, I missed it in a way that made my teeth ache. But like him I slid on pair after pair of designer sunglasses and hid my origins well. Not because I was afraid someone would call me out, but rather because I was afraid they’d ask me in.
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Dean was a family man. One of the good guys. What the hell was he doing giving drunken tongue to a woman other than his wife on reality television?
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What I meant was, if I worked at home, if I set up shop in one, three, seven of the bedrooms inside the house, I would actually have to work because there might actually be the possibility of Ricky or Immelda or the guy who does the bills suddenly walking in on me and expecting to see art, work, product, something other than a bedraggled girl, still in her pajamas, drinking gin with a straw and playing with rhinestones.
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No, Magdalena, you already left and last time I checked, son trumped brother so take that to your shrink and smoke it.
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When we first moved to L.A. my favorite thing to say was, That’s so L.A. I used it to describe just about everything from fake boobs to traffic. Then I got implants and started to drive.
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And yet, here’s the thing: sitting silently next to Quentin felt all right. It was comfortable even. I had all sorts of things I could say, like: where are you from? or What do you do when the sadness gets so heavy you think it will crush you? or Ever killed anybody? but for the first time in a long time I didn’t feel the need to say anything. And it felt good. To sit. And drink.
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Standing in front of the Guadalupe Wedding Chapel I waited for a cab, and when it arrived it wasn’t yellow. It was green with a billboard for Viagra on the roof.
Why isn’t anything like the movies?
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Seriously, I snatched my keys from his outstretched hand. I am just barely holding on here and you think a weekend with Mom and her bottle, watching Dad barbecue his dinner in the shed, is going to snap me back to reality?
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We could have bought bikes and gotten inked and revved our engines, together. But instead I was left. In a hotel room. Alone.
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Had I been there, had I not driven back to the ranch to work on water, you could have trusted me when I told you Junah didn’t fall from anything, but as you know I left him and down he went.
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He was the most level headed, until…
He was the safest climber they had ever met, until…
He was a badass soloer until…
…he fell to his death.
Until he fell to his death.
Until.
…Los Angeles, beneath the pixie dust and beyond the Sunset strip, is really nothing more than a desert where the water is scarce and we’re all thirsty.
Summary
Magdalena de la Cruz and her husband Ricky have made their fortune in bottled water and are living in L.A. among the filthy rich and famous. Trips to the wax studio, power lunches, Pilates, gin, and business fill Magdalena’s days until her brother Junah is killed in a climbing accident…an accident that Magdalana feels responsible for. Magdalena literally crawls under her bed for days and from there, her life begins to spiral out of control…retreating further and further within herself and physically re-constructing the outside.
What I Liked
Puck – we’d all be lucky to have a true friend like Puck. Someone who believes in you no matter what and accepts you just the way you are…freaky drama included.
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Quentin – I won’t say too much about this character to keep from spoilers…but he’s a good guy. Besides the obvious (and you’ll find that out when you get to that part), I think he really wants to help Magdalena…but unlike everyone else around her, Quentin realizes that she must want to help herself first.
What I Didn’t Like
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Ricky – I’m sorry…I really feel guilty for this…but I didn’t like him. How in the world he put up with Magdalena for so long, I’ll never understand. He’s caught up in the L.A. lifestyle even more so than she is…and maybe that’s how he does it. But, I just couldn’t see it.
Overall Recommendation
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So L.A. is an intense look at the “power” of reinvention in a culture that values the outside of a person more than the inside…a Stepford Wives kind of culture that is L.A. as described by Hoida. How can someone deal with real life in a world that is so make believe?? So L.A. is not a happy story by any stretch of the imagination…but neither is the issue of stripping self image from individuals based on what others deem worthy…in any situation but especially not in Magdalena’s. What complicates this story even more is that Magdalena de la Cruz seems to choose a fabricated way of life in order to retreat into herself and protect herself from her grief…letting the outside world see a “costume” of sorts instead of who she truly is…possibly even a psychic protective measure after the trauma of Junah’s death and her perceived role in the accident.
Deep stuff this is.
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The language and a few graphic sex scenes/fantasies would keep me from recommending this to everyone…it doesn’t bother me and I never felt that any of the scenes or language were gratuitous; I was shocked from time to time, but I think that was the point. The rawness helps the reader see and even feel how deeply Magdalena is falling into her own trap.
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