This was unsettling really. A bit early 80's despair at impending nuclear winter and desperation in the face of tiny tight lives with unfeeling husbands, or egoistic young men picking up random women from grimy diners. I don't recommend it if you've recently had a break up or are feeling pesimistic about people. It's not all like this though, there are lots of larger than life characters, and interesting look at possible lives, ways of living lives.Loulou the hefty full-of-life potter who lives with a multitide of waifish poets who make fun of her and gather around her light with eagerness, and Yvonne the artist who lives alone and paints strange men, Emma who survives a boat down Niagra Falls and then beleives she is invincible, the narrator going home to her parents and watching her father get sick and time rush by, Joel the smug ideologue and activist who slowly drives his girlfriend to drastic actions... these people are jam-packed with hope and pain and confusion and wry humour. It's hard to read this and not see parts of yourself and the people around you.
'Yvonne has had to learn how to take care of herself; she didn't always know how. She's like a plant - not a sickly one, everone always comments on how healthy she always is - but a rare one, which can flourish and even live only under certain conditions. A transplant. She would like to write down instructions for hertself and hand them over to someone else to be carried out, but despite several attempts on her part this hasn't proved to be possible.'
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