[A] winning, original and supremely intelligent novel.” —Richard Eder, The New York Times Colony Girl is a teetering, scary, vibrant, and funny book, alternately spare as a cornfield and rich with gently surreal invention.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of Girl In Landscape and Motherless Brooklyn Los Angeles Times Book Review
Colony Girl is a teetering, scary, vibrant, and funny book, alternately spare as a cornfield and rich with gently surreal invention.
author of Girl In Landscape and Motherless Brookly Jonathan Lethem
Though she attends a public high school, shows up at parties and lands a highway road-crew summer job, everyone knows 15-year-old Eve is a Colony girl--part of a Christian religious settlement surrounded by cornfields outside Arhat, Iowa. We meet her drunk and throwing up at a party--and falling in love with the host's father, who is trying to help her. In such circumstances, Eve usually reminds people she can't have a ride home--"no cars in the Bible." Life at the Colony follows strict rules, as set by autocratic, charismatic religious leader Gordon ("no last names in the Bible"), but recently Gordon has been in a bit of a slump. He drinks and watches old reruns, and is inspired only when his satellite dish picks up what he's sure is an original I Love Lucy signal, bouncing around in space. Gordon cuts Eve a lot of slack because her mother once was his lover, and Eve has become his spunky young soul mate. Eve takes advantage of her relative freedom, trying very hard to lose her virginity to her hunky boyfriend, Joey, or his father, whichever one she can seduce first. But when Gordon announces that he plans to take one of Eve's teenage friends as his bride, Eve sets off on a campaign to ruin him, aided by information she garners from a businessman who owns the local strip joint. Rayfiel (Split Levels) doesn't give readers a full dose of either satire or coming-of-age story, though there are elements of both here, subtly fused in a smart, funny, oddball story that has much truth and wit, and a deliciously lusty, smart teenage narrator. Though Eve's final escape seems a little abrupt, by the time she leaves, readers will be convinced that the ex-Colony girl has all it takes to survive in the real world. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Neither as entertaining nor as provocative as Rayfiel's first novel, Split-Levels, this work tells the story of a small Christian community in Iowa and of Eve, who wants to escape it. Only 15, Eve spends her time trying not to be a good girl. She works on a road crew, drinks with her buddies, and yearns for sex with both handsome Joey and his father--anything to grow up faster. Meanwhile, the community's founder and cultish leader, Gordon, has begun to act strangely. Utterly uncharismatic and seemingly powerless, he prefers watching reruns and cable to guiding his flock. Despite all of this, there is little tension in this limp novel. The characters are poorly rendered (it is never clear why Eve is unhappy and rebellious or what she hopes to prove) and the town's history confusing. Why did the colonists come here? Why do they stay? A marginal purchase.--Yvette Weller Olson, City Univ. Lib., Renton, WA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Rayfiel (Split-Levels, 1994) restores his talent for the religious/sexual baroque to a place it fits perfectly—an isolationist Iowan religious commune, in which a 15-year-old girl begins to see things for what they are. Eve, the Colony girl of the title, is a splendid, sharply written creation: romantic enough to hope, innocent enough to hurt, and wise enough to move on. The Colony, located in tiny Arhat, is "sixty-two of us," Eve says, "twelve families, refugees from a world that was out of control, trying to lead Christian lives." Eve's mother has a "past" with Gordon, the eccentric leader of the Colony, and charismatic Everclear slugger who perpetually wears shades. This mysterious balance is upset when Gordon announces his plans to marry Serena, Eve's best friend. While working a summer job on a road crew, Eve has a taste of the real world, and especially of Joey, a wounded, shy, teenaged dream with whom she intends to lose her virginity. While negotiating a peace between Joey and his father Herb, Eve finds herself adored by the father as well, and as this erotic contest is in play, she's determined to stop innocent Serena's marriage. She needs dirt on Gordon, and she gets it—somewhat improbably—by working in a business associate's strip-joint in exchange for information. The Colony is scandalized, and as the wedding ceremony begins, Eve confronts Gordon with her knowledge that he is, in fact, Jewish. She demands a no-fault release from the Colony; once free, she discovers Joey and Herb have left her behind for San Diego. Now fully on her own, she heads for New York City, "where the smart people live," she ironically adds. In a story strung tight with sexual andspiritual tension, Eve is a pleasure to watch on the page: credibly innocent, crafty and resilient, she rewards the term "plucky" with engaging meaning.
