Loving Women
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
It is 1953. The Korean War is ending. The Eisenhower era is beginning. Patti Page and Frankie Laine sit at the top of the charts. And aspiring cartoonist Michael Devlin, Brooklyn born and bred, is heading south to become a man. Pete Hamill's prose has always been praised for its energy and muscularity. But rarely, if ever, has he achieved the tough-and-tender lyricism and imagistic power of his sensual new novel, Loving Women.
When Michael arrives at the U.S. Navy supply base in Pensacola, Florida, he is immediately plunged into a world he's never before encountered or imagined. Sensitive, street-smart, but wildly naive about the sadistic terrors of the service and the bigotry of the Deep South, he thrashes through a baptism of frustration and despair - until he meets Eden Santana. Eden is everything he's ever dreamed of: older, wiser, nonplussed by his ingenuous ways - the perfect instructor for a Catholic virgin in the art of lovemaking, in sexual pleasure, confidence and courage. Though their steamy passion is destined to dissipate, there is no way Michael can prepare himself for the circumstances under which his enigmatic lover disappears. Their heartbreaking parting becomes entwined with frightening secrets about each other, the South and the friends they make along the way.
As compelling in narrative drive as it is utterly convincing in mood and tone, Loving Women's cinematic immediacy and haunting storytelling signify Pete Hamill writing at the top of his talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although it covers well-worn ground--a 17-year-old sailor's passage to manhood in the 1950s--veteran journalist Hamill's latest novel is told with such emotional urgency and pictorial vividness that it has the flavor of a well-liked old story rediscovered (in fact, it shares a good deal of atmosphere and incident with Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues ). Brooklyn-born Irish Catholic Michael Devlin (who narrates from middle age, heading toward his third divorce) arrives at his Navy base in Pensacola, Fla., with ambitions to become a cartoonist, lose his virginity and solve some of the mysteries of adult life. Lessons are imparted by a brutish master-at-arms, an ineffably hip black musician, and a cynical, smart fellow sailor who is a closet homosexual. Most important in his life is Eden Santana, a kind, emotionally bruised older woman with whom Michael falls hopelessly in love. Although Hamill's characters all have a ring of familiarity, and he insists too firmly on giving every one of them a sad secret and a predictable confessional monologue, he invests real passion, narrative energy and fondly remembered detail in this novel, and it pays off. BOMC alternate.
