Immaculate Connection

DETAILS

Title: IMMACULATE CONNECTION

Author: Michelle Sawyer

Publisher: Alsyon Books, 2007

ISBN: 1593500203

Genre: Lesbian Fiction | Romantic Comedy

BACKCOVER BLURB

Readers asked for it, and now Macy Delongchamp, our favourite Manhattan lipstick lesbian, returns for another wild, wicked adventure, only to discover that commitment to your one true love isn’t a walk off into the sunset. Mayhem ensues as high-strung Macy is faced with parenthood, sobriety, and life as a California girl!

WHAT I THOUGHT

Immaculate Connection, from Michelle Sawyer, is the follow up to the Lambda Literary Award-nominated, and oh so drolly-written, They Say She Tastes Like Honey, the novel that introduced us to the irrepressible lipstick-lesbian, Macy (Marcella) Delongchamp.

Drug addict, self-confessed sex-addict and habitual alcoholic, Macy has seen the light all in the name of love, and now trends a tenuous path toward both sobriety and abstinence in order to please her new wife, Faith. But Macy is, well, Macy, wonderfully flawed, and all too human. She’s vain, funny, crude, droll, irritating, tragic, witty, and just the sort of character you root for despite all her failings and root for because of all her failings.

Let’s face it, Michelle Sawyer has written this character so well you are left feeling you know her, or have a friend who knows someone living in New York, who actually knows Macy. For me, Sawyer has nailed Macy so well that I breezed through Immaculate Connection in one head shaking, laughter filled sitting. You can’t help but laugh, you can’t help but roll your eyes, and more, you cannot help but sympathize with Sawyer’s Macy and her polyester descent into Hell.

This novel isn’t without it’s flaws, the uneven tempo for one, and visitations of dead step-mother, Vi (who, btw, is a great character) but it’s important to remember Macy is not only working hard at sobriety, leaving off the drugs, and suffering withdrawal in the worse way possible. She’s also hit the change; one that adds extra strain to every facts of Macy’s life so that you know it’s just a matter of time before Macy goes off the rails. And she does, big time!

Despite what others have written about Sawyer’s novel, and Macy in particular, denigrating this as a ho-hum outing I think they missed the point: Macy is in serious trouble, loosing her mind, and paranoid about loosing the two things in her life that make life, well, worth living: Faith and her son, Banky.

Personally, I think Sawyer kept true to her character, vulgarity and all, and in doing so bucks convention, and brings us a very satisfying read with an ending that is, well, just typically Macy!