Lorna Landvik is a national treasure whose writing packs a folksy punch, and she’s never afraid to sink her characters into the stickiest situations. We knew we had a winner on our hands when Landvik penned her uproarious paean to the lives of our mothers and grandmothers in “Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons.” And in her latest novel, “Oh My Stars,” Landvik proves she has earned a rightful place in the pantheon of American humorists, beside her fellow Minnesotan Garrison Keillor.
Landvik is a poster child for the importance of the writer’s voice – the breezy, familiar tone she establishes never fails to create a bond between the reader and her many colorful characters, though regular visitors to the land of Landvik might bristle at the use of the word “characters.” The personalities that populate the pages of Depression-era “Oh My Stars” feel more like fast friends.
When we meet lovable Violet Mathers, she has lost one of her limbs in a factory accident on her 16th birthday (“A flash fire of shock and pain exploded at Violet’s elbow joint and in her brain, and just as red hot was her outrage: But it’s my birthday!”)
Only 6 when her mother ran away with the town pharmacist leaving Violet marooned in Mount Crawford, Ky., the little girl acts as a sponge for her father’s drunken anger; losing a limb only compounds her misery. Teased mercilessly for her “ugly mutt” looks, Violet’s talent for designing and sewing her own clothes at least gave her a career in fashion to look forward to before the accident.
The moment she reads a newspaper account of the first man to take his life jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge, she is determined to be suicide No. 2 and wipes out her savings to hop a bus west. But in North Dakota, fate intervenes in the person of Kjel Hedstrom, and after a childhood spent saving the lives of injured animals, the gloriously blond son of a preacher man adds Violet to his list of rescues.
Instead of taking that leap, Violet agrees to a more promising road trip – traveling with Kjel and his friend Austin, whom she’s sure is “the blackest man ever to find himself on the North Dakota prairie.” As she proved when she tripped over the troubled iconography of female discontent in “Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons,” Landvik never shies away from uncomfortable truths; prejudiced Violet’s initial – albeit short-lived – distaste for Austin personalizes the racial tensions that gripped this country in the hardscrabble 1930s and beyond.
After picking up Austin’s brother, Dallas, the fun-loving troupe forges a close bond tramping between gin joints playing musical gigs. The “Pearltones” are often the first mixed-race band to take the stage together, and in the South, they have a series of close scrapes. Still, with Violet acting as their new manager, they’re a smash success singing their own ballads. And even though Kjel knows he’s lucky to have Violet as a friend (“she could do more with one arm and fifty cents than a two-armed person with a dollar”), he’s far from immune to the charms of the ladies in the audience:
“Intoxicated less from the free-flowing liquor than he was from the close proximity of all these women, Kjel felt nearly cross-eyed taking in all their pretty faces. … And their perfume! Lavender and rose waters, Jungle Gardenia, Taboo, and talcum powder and underneath that, the musky tang of a woman that thankfully hadn’t been covered up by all the canned and bottled scents. Kjel knew he wasn’t in Heaven, but he knew he was close.”
Every page of “Oh My Stars” is redolent with decade-specific scents that conjure the ’30s; combined with Landvik’s flair for swift storytelling, these elements lend a deeply atmospheric texture to her work.
Ultimately, every woman who has anguished over a man will be rooting for Violet as she pines for Kjel, and the surprising outcome of their complicated relationship will keep readers engaged for every beat of her road-weary heart. And oh, my stars, but how those 400 pages do fly by!
Andrea Hoag is a Lawrence, Kan., writer who also reviews for Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Oh My Stars
By Lorna Landvik
Ballantine, 400 pages, $24.95
