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Polite sex
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1991
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Publishers Weekly Review
Tula Springs, La., the locale of Wilcox's four, highly praised comic novels ( Modern Baptists ) is present here only as a reference point in the story of two young women, girlhood friends in Tula Springs, who come to New York City in the '70s. Just out of Smith and longing both for an acting career and a chance to lose her virginity with a husband who will worship her for having saved it, Emily Brix settles instead for a tedious job in a Times Square movie production company and a marriage of convenience. As her life slowly slides downhill, Emily remains adrift, out of place, unsure of who she is and what real love might encompass. Clara Edward, once third-runner-up in the Miss Louisiana beauty pageant, comes to the city in flight from an abusive fiance. Aspiring only to remain unbruised, Clara winds up as a TV star, married to a gentle man who dotes on her. Exploring the ironies of their vastly different situations, Wilcox is sometimes amusing, but more often tiresome; after a while, the contrast of Emily's hard luck with Clara's good fortune begins to pall. A jolting last-minute revelation comes too late; in its proper place in the narrative it might have given this tale the poignancy and credibility it never quite achieves. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Emily and Clara, both from Tula Springs, Louisiana, seek their fortunes in New York, and though both want to become famous actresses, roles seem to fall into Clara's lap, while they slip through Emily's fingers. Emily eventually marries Hugh, an intelligent but sexually confused theologian, while Clara dumps F. X., her macho fiance, for Lucas, a (barely) married former producer. The narrative moves forward and then back again in time, cleverly showing the difference between recall and reality, the subtle distinction between how things really were and how kind, or gently forgiving, memories can be. While characters strive to maintain emotional aloofness, their lives--in the randomness of success and failures--remain entangled. Wilcox writes with empathy, depicting the light and restless sleep of those with shattered dreams. ~--Eloise Kinney
Kirkus Review
For his fifth novel, Wilcox (Sort of Rich, 1989, etc.) leaves the everyday comedy of small-town Louisiana for more serious matters in New York City, where a few Tula Springs natives struggle with ambition and disappointment, and faith and disillusion. Wilcox plays with perspective in a narrative that jumps back and forth in time as he follows the lives of two Louisiana girls who come to the big city in the early 70's with seemingly opposite goals. The high-minded Emily Brix, whose parents are pretty low on the Tula Springs social ladder, wants to conquer the serious stage fresh from her years at Smith. Instead, she finds herself working as a ""glorified receptionist"" for a Times Square movie-production company, where she reads countless scripts that offend her lofty cultural standards. This petite, virginal, self-effacing blonde eventually marries Hugh Vanderbilt, a well-healed graduate student in theology at Union, whose practical proposal leads to an unromantic marriage. Meanwhile, Clara Tilman, a hometown beauty and friend of Emily's sister, decides to become a model to escape her abusive boyfriend back home, the studly F.X. Pickens (the future coke-head ex-con of Modern Baptists). With luck and newly acquire savvy, Clara exploits her southern belle act and earns modest fame as a TV actress while Emily's life spirals downward. Her acting career never takes off; her marriage falls apart; and she finds herself a dumpy 40-year-old living in cramped quarters and working at a test-preparation center. Things are never as clear as they seem here, and Wilcox's narrative style allows him to return to key events, exposing the passionate and messier truths of everyone's sexual behavior. Emily proves the most serious misrememberer--she's also a sexually repressed expert at denial who shares a dark secret with her alter-ego Clara. A surprisingly ordinary fiction from the otherwise gifted Wilcox, whose first venture outside Tula Springs drifts, with little humor to steer it straight. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Summary
The author's fifth novel (and his first set outside of Louisiana) spans 20 years in the lives of two Tula Springs girls seeking love and success in Manhattan. Wilcox reaches a new level of humor and empathy as he brilliantly traces the two girls' paths of dreams deferred.
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