Girls in Trucksby Katie Crouch
Little, Brown & Company, 2008
256 pages
Summary (from Barnes and Noble): Sarah Walters is a less-than-perfect debutante. She tries hard to follow the time-honored customs of the Charleston Camellia Society, as her mother and grandmother did, standing up straight in cotillion class and attending lectures about all the things that Camellias don't do. (Like ride with boys in pickup trucks.) But Sarah can't quite ignore the barbarism just beneath all that propriety, and as soon as she can she decamps South Carolina for a life in New York City. There, she and her fellow displaced Southern friends try to make sense of city sophistication, to understand how much of their training applies to real life, and how much to the strange and rarefied world they've left behind.
When life's complications become overwhelming, Sarah returns home to confront with matured eyes the motto "Once a Camellia, always a Camellia"- and to see how much fuller life can be, for good and for ill, among those who know you best.
Review: I have conflicting feelings about this novel. When I started reading it, I absolutely loved it. The plot was intermingled with short stories about Sarah's childhood, specifically growing up in the South and being a Camellia. As the novel continued on and she focused on her disastrous love life, I felt sad for Sarah. But when she continued to make unbelievably terrible choices and became bitter about her life, then I began to dislike Sarah and the novel. Overall, I would say it was an interesting character story that was well written. Would I read another novel by Katie Crouch? I would like to try Men and Dogs, because I did enjoy her writing style. It's just difficult to like a novel when you grow to dislike the main character so much. Rating: *** out of 5.
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