UNCW grad mixes romance with magical realism in new novel 'The Holloway Girls'
Like Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen, UNCW graduate Susan Bishop Crispell mixes magic and romance.
Her latest, "The Holloway Girls," is no different — and, as in Crispell's earlier novels, "The Secret Ingredient of Wishes" and "Dreaming in Chocolate," some baking is stirred into the mix.
For generations, the Holloway girls have been famous in the little town of Talus, not too far from Asheville, N.C. When a girl from the Holloway family turns 16, something magical happens.
During that 16th year, known as "Kissing Season," every person kissed by that Holloway Girl has good luck for a few hours, a few days or maybe longer, and maybe not all at once. One lucky kissee found a Picasso worth millions in a garage sale; another became a best-selling author.
The stories are recorded in a leather-bound Book of Luck, filled out by the Holloway women.
There are a few rules, though: The kiss must be consensual, and the other person cannot already be in love with someone else.
Some Holloway girls, like Maggie, try to spread the luck around. But Maggie's little sister, Remy, has other ideas the summer she turns 16. She only has eyes for Isaac, the dreamy high school jock whose locker is just three spaces away from hers. She's saving her big kiss for him.
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Alas, Isaac hasn't been entirely honest; he still has feelings for his ex-girlfriend Hannah. The results, after the big night by the waterfall, are catastrophic. Isaac winds up in the hospital, nearly dead. He loses his chance at an athletic scholarship, finds out he has to repeat 10th grade and then his dog gets spooked by the Fourth of July fireworks and runs away.
Hannah and Isaac's gang promptly turn Remy into a pariah, and she's left literally steaming in the family bakery, helping her mom make its signature whoopie pies. (They're kind of like s'mores, only twice as good.)
Remy tries, vainly, to find a way to undo the curse. One answer might come when a cute-looking guy moves in next door — and he's a musician. ("The Holloway Girls" comes with its own playlist.)
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The result, like Crispell's earlier books, makes delightful summer reading, but it also offers a window into current high school life. Things have come a long way since Archie, Jughead and Veronica — or indeed, since "Riverdale."
For one thing, at least three of the novel's characters are lesbians or bisexuals, and what's interesting is, it's no big deal. Parents don't wig out, except for when two girls get caught kissing in the swimming pool when Mom's book club walks in the backyard.
Persecution is minimal. None of the women are agonzied or tortured, and nobody has to take refuge in drugs or a bus trip to New York. It just is, and nobody gets particularly excited about it — which, in the Bible Belt, is something of a milestone.
BOOK REVIEW
'THE HOLLOWAY GIRLS'
By Susan Bishop Crispell
Sourcebooks Fire, $10.99 paperback
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Susan Bishop Crispell mixes romance with magic in The Holloway Girls
