Iron Shoes - Softcover

Giles, Molly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074993221X ISBN 13: 9780749932213

Publisher: Piatkus Books, 2000

Synopsis

Feeling stuck in a rut and resigned to life, Kay Sorenson longs for some excitement. Suddenly, she finds out that her impossible, uncompromising mother is dying and infuriating as her mother is, Kay starts to realize that she is the glue that holds their family together.

About this title

Review:

Marooned in a loveless marriage and on the cusp of a full-blown mid-life crisis, Kay Sorensen hardly needs the additional grief of tending to a dying parent. Tribulations compound however: as she frets over her manipulative and fading mother, Ida, she must also reckon with her father's indifference, her husband's insufficiencies and--she fears--her own squandered potential. Such is the treacherous and often bitterly comedic territory Molly Giles wanders in her first novel, Iron Shoes, where the Northern California semi-serenity fails to allay one family's apparent disintegration.

As Kay puts in her part-time hours paging at the local library, she ponders her as-yet-undiscovered true calling and indulges fantasies of an affair. It's almost a relief to be distracted from her immobilising frustrations by her mother's decline. Full of bitter and contentious self-pity, Ida trudges downward gracelessly. Her death provokes ever-worsening pangs of self-doubt in Kay, as she and her condemnatory father fumble to make sense of their relationship. Kay is pushed toward both revelation and decision: "If you can clean up the mess outside then maybe the mess inside will straighten out too", she opines. It's the "maybe" that muddles her tidy formula.

Iron Shoes is alternately sobering and breezy as Giles moves from the more unpleasant inevitabilities of Kay's world to the often absurd stratagems of family reconciliation. An ensemble cast enlivens things as well: Kay's sexy and audacious friend Zabeth counsels her and--just maybe--is coming on to her father, and her husband Neal is obsessed with a healthy diet but forgetful even of how many years he and Kay have been married. If at times the heroine's travails seem something of a caricature of fortysomething despair, Giles picks up the slack with a few well-placed narrative sleights of hand. Throughout, Kay's bafflement at other people's apparently well-manicured lives rings at perfect pitch. --Ben Guterson

Review:

Barbara Sutton The New York Times Book Review Giles...is a gifted writer -- witty, with keen, comic timing and a graceful sense of economy.

Karen Karbo San Jose Mercury News Giles is a darkly funny writer -- one is reminded of Carson McCullers -- and her dialogue is sharp enough to give you whiplash...[a] tough, brilliant little novel.

Kate Flatley The Wall Street Journal Molly Giles is a cut above....With tart humor and sharp wit, she makes her characters boldly three dimensional.

Jean Thompson author of Who Do You Love Iron Shoes is fierce, funny, always exhilarating. This is comedy with an edge to it, and grief that sees with clear eyes.

About this edition

• Publisher: Piatkus Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 074993221X
• ISBN 13: 9780749932213
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 239