book review: Late Bloomer

    Title: Late Bloomer
    Author: Melissa Pritchard
Review: This is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. It’s ostensibly about Prudence True Parker, a divorced woman, a teacher at a community college in Arizona, living most of the time with her teenaged daughter, whose life pretty much goes on without her. She doesn’t have much money, and she scrapes by – but she has a pool in the back yard and she occasionally splurges without realizing it. She goes to the library one day and, in the unisex [restroom], aids another patron in need – gives them some toilet paper. She learns that the recipient of her largesse is none other than Mildred Crawley, the author of the Savage romance novel series, appearing at the library for a speaking engagement. Prudence attends.
    Shortly thereafter, she is invited for tea at Mildred’s house…only to discover that she’s actually a man – Digby Deeds. And he’s dying. And he wants to “give” Prudence all of his plot outlines for the rest of the Savage series. Now, she’s broke, but she’s also a writer (of one obscure, academic book that no one’s read). She can’t debase herself by agreeing.
    But then, maybe she’ll have to. And, naturally, events require it.
    So she comes to agree to write the novels. And shortly thereafter, she has a psychic reading, in which she learns that she’s soon to find love in the form of a younger man with long dark hair whom she’d already met in the “etheric realm” – her soul mate. She’d dreamed of a man who looked like this, laying down on her as if on a mattress.
    Then, at a Native American charity event, she meets Ray Chasing Hawk. And her life turns upside down.
    This is a crazy book. There’s no clear-cut protagonist. Everybody’s weird; everybody’s lying; everybody’s got their serious problems. But through it all, there’s a sense that Prudence and Ray are, for whatever unexplainable reason, somehow joined. And it’s that sense that made it readable even when it was uncomfortable, even when I wanted to scream at the characters, and even when I was so frustrated with them and their lack of sense and strength that I wanted to put the book down. Because when I did put it down, I’d just pick it up again later, all the more eager to know what happened. That is, I think, the mark of a good book. I actually cared how it ended.
Rate: 8. I borrowed it from the library and I'm trying to convince myself that I don't need to go out and buy it now. But as I sat down to write this review and paged through the book to get some specifics, I found myself re-reading and wanting to just start all over again at the beginning. I don't know much about Native American culture, and it was really instructive in that realm. And the writing aspect - I mean, writing as a profession - was done well, too. It is quirky and fascinating and seems like it'll stick with me.