Oh My Stars: A Novel [Hardcover]

OH MY STARS by Lorna Landvik

May 6, 2005

I've read only a few books by Lorna Landvik so far, but I already look forward to each new book she writes. Her latest, OH MY STARS, was quite different from PATTY JANE'S HOUSE OF CURL and her more recent ANGRY HOUSEWIVES EATING BON BONS, but I think this latest book is one that I'll remember for a long time.

Violet Mathers starts out in life feeling unloved and unwanted. She's too tall, too plain, and then after she loses an arm to a horrific accident in the sewing factory where she works (she is only sixteen years old at the time), she soon feels that her life is not worth living. At the age of 18, she leaves her father (her mother had left them years ago for another man), gets on a bus bound for San Francisco, hoping to be the second person to end their life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

What can only be fate happens during this bus trip. The bus ends up in an accident, and because they are stranded somewhere in North Dakota, she ends up being rescued by a very handsome young man named Kjel, and his good friend Austin, and they bring her home. This is the turning point of her so far miserable life, and her life is now on the upswing.

A good part of this book entails their travels as a musical band they call THE PEARLTONES, and Kjel becomes something of an Elvis-like music idol. The time period is the late 1930's, so rock n' roll has not yet been invented, color lines have not been crossed, and so their musical world is a bit different than what we know today. They encounter racism during their travels, as Austin and his brother Dallas are black, but Kjel doesn't see color, and while Violet was brought up to believe that blacks and whites should be segregated, she learns something new through her friendships with Kjel and Austin.

I really loved this book. I do have to admit that there were times when I felt the book could have been edited differently, but by the end of the book, I had a feeling that this was a story I would not forget easily. I am glad I read it and am looking forward to more by Lorna Landvik. This may have been her best book yet. Violet's early life was depressing, however, and some may not enjoy reading about her early years, but I saw this story as an uplifting type of novel, where even the almost impossibly sad lives can turn around if surrounded by people that care about them.

Violet narrates: "Who'd have ever thought a shunned, husky-voiced, one armed, big-chinned girl with a hive of bees in her head could live a life so full of miracles?"

I think that summed up the book quite nicely.

While not roller in the hair funny like her Patty Jane's House of Curl, or as witty as Angry Housewives Eating Bon-bons, still, ja, sure, Minnesota author Lorna Landvik's newest foray into the foibles of the US NorthLand is a fun and graceful frolick. This time, we're in and out of North Dakota and on a road trip with a band in the 1930's. The travelling band features a pre-Elvis, Preslian precursor Norwegian/American Lutheran Boy Named Kjel (pronounced in the Norwegian way as "Shell" just as their native son Kjierkegaard is pronounce "Chicago" <-accent on the first syllable)and includes 2 black brothers and a 1 armed girl/manager.

Told alternately in the first "old ladies are the ghosts-boo!-of American culture;only a few people actually see us" and third person, the story wends its way from the old Kentucky home to North Dakota through the segregated South and back to a Garrison Keillor-esque North Dakota. Landvik's latest is a fresh brisk breath of North Dakota air. /TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer

It's the Depression; Violet Mathers is 18 years old, creatively accomplished, a cacophony of ugliness, the product of an absent mother and a cruel father and the casualty of a factory accident that robs her of her talents and sets her on a suicide mission to the Golden Gate Bridge. As chance (or fate, luck or doom?) would have it, the bus she is traveling on crashes in a small North Dakota town. Here Violet meets the men who will change her life, musicians, Kjel Hedstrom and his 'black as night' friend Austin Skyes. In love with Kjel, repulsed by Austin and eventually annoyed by Dallas (Austin's ex-con brother), Violet joins the threesome as they travel across America on a tuneful, almost Elvis-like adventure of self-discovery and social issues.

The self-discovery is nicely done. It's quite easy to become drawn into Violet's world thanks to Landvik's brillant humor and empathy.

The quartet of characters, though not deep, is fun and pleasing and easy to care about.

Landvik ultimately loses her reality when dealing with the social issues of a distinctly black/white 1930s America. They are never fully addressed or even worse, developed into the sticky situations and considerable quandaries they were. An encounter with the KKK is woefully short and flawed with no ensuing aftermath or logical social ramifications for the times. I sensed as if the author was floating through the period and was apprehensive about taking on racial matters and losing the cloudy, lighthearted, atmoshphere on which much of the novel rests.

While this is a pleasurable read, nonetheless, historically, it lacks a significant punch to give it the real impact it could so easily have had.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 48 reviews  4.4 out of 5 stars