Is this a fantasy about literary Heroines appearing in real life? Is it a gritty girl-trapped-in-the-looney-bin drama? Is it some sort of Freudian tale meant to have Serious Deeper Meaning (images of fatherless girls, forests, and puberty abound)? Why are there every-other-chapter references to Nixon and Watergate that do nothing to move the story along? Are the brief appearances of the Heroines real or imagined? The final straw for me was the tale of Penny's real father, which just tipped the whole thing over the edge into a complete muddle.
The story just gets more and more jumbled from there. This was a grand start to what I imagined would be a wonderful romp of a story, but then the book suddenly veered into (as another reviewer here so aptly described it) 'Girl, Interrupted' territory, sending Penny into a horrifying psych ward for no apparent reason. When a Hero arrives to reclaim his Heroine (a very unusual event), things start to get interesting. While Anne-Marie coddles and comforts the Heroines, being careful not to divulge their ultimate fates or plot lines to them, Penny rages and rebels over her mother's neglect. It begins with a charming concept: Heroines from famous books suddenly appear at the bed & breakfast run by 13 year-old Penny Entwhistle's mother, Anne-Marie. This mess of a book, though well-written, tried to do too many things at once. I was so disappointed in this I hardly know where to begin.
But when she arrives at the forbidden woods, she's in no mood to obey her mother's second rule, never to enter - and soon finds herself in a world of very real heroes and villains, an unwilling heroine in her very own terrifying story. Hurt and excluded, and frustrated by her mother's passivity in the face of Emma's terrible fate, Penny strikes out across the Prairie to cool her hot head. There's nothing to be done for poor Emma, immersed in her narrative crisis, save for the provision of tea, a tirelessly sympathetic ear, and clean linens.Adolescent angst isn't a patch on beautiful and grief-stricken- and Penny, a moody thirteen, knows she's no competition for her mother's attentions against these ethereal creatures. But if there's one rule at Prairie Bluff, it's never meddle in the lives of the Heroines, however cruel the destinies to which they are bound. The last thing you wanted was for Anna Karenina to discover accidentally that she was bound to take her own life on the railroad tracks.' Watergate is breaking news, but at the Prairie Bluff boarding house in rural Illinois, there are more immediate concerns.Emma Bovary has arrived unannounced - and distraught - and Anne-Marie and her daughter Penny have torn themselves away from the television coverage to attend to their new guest. One never knew who might show up and in what state. 'In the padlocked attic she'd hidden all her books on shelves with locked pine doors.
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