Iron Shoes
A Novel
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From acclaimed short story writer Molly Giles, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated collection Rough Translations, comes this splendid debut novel about one woman's spirited search for identity and meaning following her family's disintegration.
Set amid the woodsy affluence of Northern California, Iron Shoes incisively chronicles the coming-of-middle-age story of Kay Sorensen, who has lived her entire life in the shadow of her glamorous parents. When Kay hits forty, she is suddenly smacked with the realization that she is not the woman she wants to be -- and certainly not the woman her family wants her to be. Her emotionally detached father will never forgive her for dropping out of Juilliard at eighteen; her dramatic, showstopping mother will never comprehend how she turned out so ordinary; and her fastidious, self-controlled second husband will never accept her weakness for red meat, cigarettes, and alcohol. Worst of all, Kay cannot forgive herself for giving up on her dreams and settling -- for a husband she doesn't love, for an amateurish church orchestra, for a dead-end job at a library bound to lose its funding. Unable to shake the feeling that she's somehow stuck, Kay lives vicariously through her free-spirited friend Zabeth and pins her hopes for the future on Charles Lichtman, a beguiling stranger with whom she feels destined to have an affair. But when her mother's illness -- seemingly feigned for as long as Kay can remember -- finally takes her life, Kay feels her ennui and stasis painfully give way to an unnerving helplessness. Losing a lifelong crutch, she is suddenly set adrift -- weightless, without a compass, and without hope.
With her crystalline prose and seamless mixing of tender tragedy and laugh-out-loud humor, Molly Giles delivers a deeply moving exploration of a middle-aged woman who has never asked herself -- nor answered -- an honest question in her life. At once heartrending, hilarious, and wise, Iron Shoes is a mesmerizing debut novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though they are monstrously selfish, Ida and Francis McLeod, the aging parents of the middle-aged protagonist of Giles's haunting first novel (after her short story collection, Rough Translations), are drawn with such nuanced understanding that one ends up as sorry for their shallow lives as for their daughter's crushed and battered psyche. The glamorous, alcoholic, self-indulgent Sorensens are too immature to be parents. They have cowed their daughter, Kay, once a promising pianist, into a frantically abject servant to their many whims and demands, to the detriment of both her own marriage and her abilities to nurture her young son. Over the years, Ida has suffered many "accidents" that have resulted in injuries and crisis surgery (her second leg has just been amputated), a perverse form of punishment of irresponsible Francis and of servitude for Kay. An assistant at a small local library in Northern California, Kay endures her mother's vicious asides and blatant manipulation, as well as her father's sarcastic wit. Unwittingly, Kay has married another cool, distant man; Victor, her husband, stays away from her in bed and refuses to engage in conversation. It's no wonder that she conceives a crush on a hunk, a painter whom she meets at the library. After her mother's medical condition goes downhill and her husband becomes even more remote, Kay smothers her feelings in alcohol, sweet foods and cigarettes, only dimly aware that she has willingly assumed the "iron shoes" she describes in a fairy tale she tells her son. Giles's psychological portrait of Kay is completely credible; it's easy to see Kay's lack of self-esteem as a reflexive response from her to chronic emotional abuse. None of this is as lugubrious as it sounds, because Giles's narrative is animated with zesty prose, whip-smart observations and a refreshing roster of minor characters. In spite of the dark terrain this novel navigates, it is a sparkling and witty account of one woman's belated coming-of-age.
