Valley fever : a novel
Record details
- ISBN: 0374299145 (hardback)
- ISBN: 9780374299149 (hardback)
- ISBN: 0374299145 : HRD
- ISBN: 9780374299149 (hardback)
- ISBN: 0374299145 (hardback)
-
Physical Description:
294 pages ; 22 cm
print - Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.
Content descriptions
General Note: | "A novel"--Jacket. |
Summary, etc.: | "A razor-sharp, cross-generational tragicomedy set in California's wine-soaked Central Valley Ingrid Palamede never returns to places she's lived in the past. For her, "whole neighborhoods, whole cities, can be ruined by the reasons you left." But when her boyfriend, Howard, en route to Aspen, breaks things off out of the blue, she's forced to return to her childhood home of Fresno, California. Back in the real wine country, where grapes are grown for mass producers like Gallo and Kendall-Jackson, Ingrid must confront her aging parents and their financial woes, soured friendships, and blissfully bad decisions. But along the way, she rediscovers her love for the land, her talent for harvesting grapes, and a deep fondness and forgiveness for the very first place she ever left. With all the sharp-tongued wit of her first novel, Rules for Saying Goodbye, Katherine Taylor examines high-class, small-town life among the grapes on the vine or soaked in vodka in Valley Fever, a blisteringly funny, ferociously intelligent, and deeply moving novel of self-discovery"-- |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | City and town life California Fiction Self-realization in women Fiction City and town life Fiction Friendship Fiction Choice Fiction Forgiveness Fiction |
Genre: | Domestic fiction. |
Available copies
- 6 of 6 copies available at Bibliomation. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Kent Memorial Library - Suffield.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 6 total copies.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kent Memorial Library - Suffield | FICTION TAYLOR (Text) | 32518132611586 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Publishers Weekly Review
Valley Fever : A Novel
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
With crisp, often droll prose, Taylor (Rules for Saying Goodbye) has written an affecting second novel, set in California's Central Valley. Ingrid Palamede, a daughter who departed her home town when she was young, returns to her parents' vineyard after a crushing breakup, under the guise of helping her ailing father with his business. Effortlessly woven in are various threads of Fresno local color that make up a landscape of love and tension: a high school boyfriend whose touch lingers, an ex-best friend who worms her way back into Ingrid's heart, an employee who is stealing from her father. The lulls of domestic ennui and nostalgia are broken up by Ingrid's sharp and humorous observations about life and the inevitable confrontation of adulthood. A breezy family saga, this story is also an ode to the decline of the valleys of California, with all their rustic beauty and hazy disenchantment. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Valley Fever : A Novel
Kirkus Reviews
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Taylor (Rules for Saying Goodbye, 2007) evokes the rich textures and rhythms of California's Central Valley in this lush novel of inheritance, family, and betrayal. Ingrid, who believes "all existential problems are solved when you're driving somewhere," narrates her return to her family's 20,000-acre farm in Fresno after her latest breakup. She's spent the decade since college in New York, London, and Los Angeles in a series of failed relationships and needs somewhere to begin again. Her father, Ned, who inherited his first hundred acres, has spent a lifetime buying and cultivating the best soil. Now he presides over Palamede Farms with "something beyond affection for the grapessomething much closer to love." But "no farmer ever wants another to do well," and love may not be enough to keep the farm going. Ned's daughters, Ingrid and her sister, Annie, a Los Angeles voice-over actress, help each other through heartaches while also discovering what very different adults they are. The sisters share a complicated relationship with their fiercely protective mother, who is hostile to almost everyone outside their family. One of the few outsiders she trusts is her husband's best friend, Felix, a successful vineyard owner who also makes wine by buying grapes from other farmers. When Ned's long-standing cough worsens, Ingrid settles in to help run the farm, tangling with Felix to make good on his promise to buy Palamede's harvest. The picking season's vivid drama is rendered through descriptions of the changing grapes as Ingrid waits for Felix to pick them before they lose their value; one day, they are "plummy and tart, but too taut yet." Meanwhile, Ingrid reunites with her estranged best friend, Bootsie, and George Sweet, the man many thought she would marry if her mother had approved. A profound novel about forces that can nurture or break the strongest connections. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Times Review
Valley Fever : A Novel
New York Times
July 5, 2015
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company
ROMANTIC BREAKUPS ARE never fun, but the Devil is in the details. It is better, for example, not to be caught completely off guard. Ideally, one should also not hear the phrase "I think I only love you when I'm drunk." No such luck for Ingrid Palamede, the heroine of Katherine Taylor's second novel, "Valley Fever." After uprooting her life in New York to live with her boyfriend in Los Angeles, she discovers, nearly a year in, that he doesn't love her. Ingrid is becoming a connoisseur of sudden, devastating breakups in exotic locales, but this one leaves her homeless and unmoored. The book begins with her crying in an airport, calling her big sister to pick her up. Any novel that begins in an airport promises a story about a journey. The tears mean the voyage will include some pit stops for existential angst and emotional growth. So it goes for Ingrid, who decides while convalescing from heartache at her sister's place in Los Angeles that perhaps it's time to go back to Fresno - the long-avoided site of her childhood, where her parents still live and her father runs a 20,000-acre farm. Returning to the Central Valley seems to break her rule never to retread disappointing territory: "Whole neighborhoods, whole cities, can be ruined by the reasons you left." But lovesick and jobless, tetchy and prodigal, Ingrid doesn't have much choice. And while Fresno may be a place of "terrible boredom and stupidity and meanness," in the words of William Saroyan, the place is not wholly without charm. Can you ever go home again? Ingrid makes a good case for it. In Fresno she reconnects with an old high school buddy and may rekindle an old flame (her first love is now a divorced local farmer). While helping her ailing father with the grape harvest, she finds comfort in the "focus and exhaustion of real work." The novel is strongest when Taylor writes about the dusty fecundity of this unique landscape, which she clearly knows intimately (Fresno also featured in her first book, "Rules for Saying Goodbye"). In the thick of summer, the heat hits you "hard enough to make your ears ring," and hangs heavy into the night. Evenings are usually quiet but for the sound of crickets and dust moving through trees, the air sweetened with a whiff of bursting fruit. Apparently there's nothing like a hot grape, "too sweet even to pick," eaten directly from the vine. It is when Taylor tries to map other terrain, however, that she starts to stumble. The story is told in the first person, yet Ingrid never feels fully realized. "Valley Fever" begins with heartache, but the offending boyfriend seems to be largely forgotten by Page 5. Ingrid comes to Fresno armed with a grant to write a screenplay about genocide - a comedy, actually - but she never seems to think much about genocide or comedy, much less the enjoyable task of blending them together. Indeed, Taylor offers rather little insight into Ingrid's interior landscape. She arms her with sundry offhand observations and quips, most of which seem uncomfortably barbed and ill-judged. For example, Ingrid skewers her seemingly compassionate and indulgent sister for her "plain beauty" and "self-centeredness," sighing that she's particularly irritating "when she's being most sincere." Such comments appear designed to paint Ingrid as an amusingly jaundiced truth-teller. Instead, she comes across as a bit bratty and un-self-aware. "Valley Fever" is essentially a coming-of-age tale, about a woman who finds herself where she least expected to. Like Fresno, it has its moments. But like cabernet grapes left too long on the vine, it is rather light, and the taste is a touch off. EMILY BOBROW is the online United States editor and a regular arts critic for The Economist.
BookList Review
Valley Fever : A Novel
Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Taylor's follow-up to her debut, Rules for Saying Goodbye (2007), portrays twentysomething Ingrid Palamede as she is forced to return to her hometown of Fresno, California, following a crushing breakup. Ingrid's older sister convinces her to spend some time with their parents, who own 20,000 acres of fertile land flush with grapes. The lives of Ingrid's parents revolve around their vineyard and the wine they produce, but Ingrid has never had an interest in the family business and never intended to return to Fresno for any length of time. And yet, the longer she stays with her family, the more Ingrid finds herself being pulled back in, not only because of her growing concerns that her father is being cheated by his best friend but also by two rekindled friendships: with Bootsie, who once betrayed her, and with her first love, George. Taylor brings a clear knowledge of winemaking and the rhythm of Fresno life to this vibrant tale of a young woman finding a fresh start in the last place she thought to look for one.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Valley Fever : A Novel
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Ingrid Palamede, a journalist who has traveled around the world, swears she doesn't return to the places she has lived, but here she is back at home in Fresno, CA, on her parent's vineyard after a breakup with yet another man of her dreams. When Ingrid's father, Ned, becomes ill, she takes over management of his property and grape sales. Taylor (The Rules for Saying Goodbye) pulls readers into the story with charming details. Ingrid's mother, Evelyn, spends most of her days eating soft-boiled eggs and playing solitaire at the kitchen table. She relies on the hotel soaps and slippers brought home during a time when the farm prospered and she could afford to travel. Uncle Felix, who drinks wine with every meal, constantly haggles over the price of grapes for his "nice" but inexpensive wine. Annie, Ingrid's sister, who has a troubled marriage, voices a cow character in a popular children's cartoon. The -Palamede family is trying to stay steady in a world that is unstable. VERDICT This story is rich with sensory details. Readers can feel the heat and humidity of the California summer. Taylor brings the scent of the harvest to the table with wonderful descriptions of meals that include grapes, figs, pistachios, almonds, and wine. This is a novel to lose yourself in.-Joyce Sparrow, Kenneth City, FL © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.