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Missy
Missy is laudanum, or liquid opium. Missy is Dol McQueen, a nineteen-year-old “flash-girl” traveling the arduous wagon trail from San Francisco to the boomtowns of the Sierra Nevada. Her to fleece the silver miners and to have a marvelous time.
Permanently gonged on missy, Dol and her entrepreneurial instincts wake up only when she comes into possession of a rum crate full of pure opium. But the crate has several owners, each more brutal than the last. Soon, instead of selling the boodle and opening her own establishment, Dol is fleeing across the salt flats and wastelands of the monumental American Southwest, where Civil War renegades, Native American mule thieves, and gangs of feral kids make hanging on to life a job for both hands.
Chris Hannan has mixed the irresistible Mark Twain of Roughing It with Annie Proulx’s brilliantly macabre wordplay, and the result is a historical novel of startling originality, in which every detail rings true. Dol McQueen is the most engaging antiheroine since Becky Sharp, and she makes Missy a debut of terrific energy, freshness, and delight.
Permanently gonged on missy, Dol and her entrepreneurial instincts wake up only when she comes into possession of a rum crate full of pure opium. But the crate has several owners, each more brutal than the last. Soon, instead of selling the boodle and opening her own establishment, Dol is fleeing across the salt flats and wastelands of the monumental American Southwest, where Civil War renegades, Native American mule thieves, and gangs of feral kids make hanging on to life a job for both hands.
Chris Hannan has mixed the irresistible Mark Twain of Roughing It with Annie Proulx’s brilliantly macabre wordplay, and the result is a historical novel of startling originality, in which every detail rings true. Dol McQueen is the most engaging antiheroine since Becky Sharp, and she makes Missy a debut of terrific energy, freshness, and delight.
297 pages, Hardcover
First published June 10, 2008
5 people are currently reading
233 people want to read
About the author
Chris Hannan
17 books2 followersChris Hannan is a Scottish playwright and novelist.
His 1990 play The Evil Doers was produced by the Bush Theatre in London and received a Time Out Award among other prizes, and in 1996 his highly-acclaimed Shining Souls won him a nomination for Lloyds Bank Playwright of the Year.
In Scotland he is best known for Elizabeth Gordon Quinn, which is widely studied and was re-mounted by the National Theatre of Scotland in the first year of its existence.
His 1990 play The Evil Doers was produced by the Bush Theatre in London and received a Time Out Award among other prizes, and in 1996 his highly-acclaimed Shining Souls won him a nomination for Lloyds Bank Playwright of the Year.
In Scotland he is best known for Elizabeth Gordon Quinn, which is widely studied and was re-mounted by the National Theatre of Scotland in the first year of its existence.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
September 15, 2008
God knows I love a spunky historical prostitute. Given that, it is serious business to say this is probably the best book about a spunky historical prostitute I HAVE EVER READ.
This is an excellent book about being a lady, a friend, a daughter, an addict, a professional and an adventuress. Also the writing is fantastic and you will learn new turns of phrase.
Here's the first sentence:
"I expect you have the consolation of religion, or the guidance of a philosophy, but when me and the girls get frazzled, or blue, or rapturous, or just awfully so-so, we shin out and buy ourselves some hats."
This is an excellent book about being a lady, a friend, a daughter, an addict, a professional and an adventuress. Also the writing is fantastic and you will learn new turns of phrase.
Here's the first sentence:
"I expect you have the consolation of religion, or the guidance of a philosophy, but when me and the girls get frazzled, or blue, or rapturous, or just awfully so-so, we shin out and buy ourselves some hats."
November 17, 2012
Yee Haw! Rolling, Rolling, Rooling...and sure thing, a little Drooling...on all that Opium being lugged around The Wild Wild West by all manner 'o folks. Gussied up tarts, full-fledged prostitutes, them Chinamen, gunslangers, gold diggers—both variety's, losers, winners, yep, you just never know who or what kind of person that is riding up behind you in this lawless land. This was a fun, rollicking, ride through the Old West, written by an award-winning playwright from across the pond. Great job Chris Hannan. Spot on. You made me laugh. Out loud.
August 12, 2008
This humdinger about a gang of San Francisco teenage prostitutes (!) who set out to start anew in one of the silver mining boom towns of the Sierra Nevadas is both hugely entertaining and very, very naughty:) On route, the girls encounter a malevolent pimp who is on the run from the San Franciso mob because he stole an invaluable case of solid opium, which he's having a hard time fencing. This puts him in a very bad mood, where he's just as likely to choke a girl to death as he is to kiss her. The protagonist, nineteen-year-old Dol, who is addicted to "missy"or laudnum (liquid opium) has decided she's going to do whatever it takes to steal that case for herself and make enough cash off it to finally "cross the river" (go straight). This one's like Deadwood meets Valley of the Dolls. There's murder, mayhem, scalping, bar brawls, affairs, betrayals and counter-betrayals. There are also loads of laughs to be had, but the humor is more Pulp Fiction than Blazing Saddles, and not for the faint of heart. There's nothing I like better than a good Wild West story, especially one as wicked as this. Scandalous!
December 14, 2008
I enjoyed the book a lot. I guess it was a historical novel, but it was also a study of the world of drug addiction. Here are some of my miscellaneous thoughts about the book:
1. Many books are great along the way and it's not the destination that is so good, but the journey getting there. I would say that the destination in this book, where our main 19 year old opium addicted call girl realizes finally, that her whole existence and actions were seriously tainted by her addiction, was the thing that makes the book work so well. I knew that her actions were tainted by drugs along the way, but the final chapters somehow made the whole book more relevant and topical and good to me as this revelation comes to her.
2. The historical parts were excellent. The descriptions of the reactions to different murders, how the "law" operated, the tolerance for bad behavior, good men seeing call girls, good women being "flashers", and just how ribald the times really were in these mining towns, were insightful and seemed correct. Almost laughable and somehow endearing compared to today.
3. I loved the relationship Dol has with each of the other flashgirls. There is a "Sex in the City" element here that was very enjoyable and sometimes touching.
4. Dol, our narrator, is a hilarious and very intelligent girl with her insights into human behavior and comments about living the sober life away from the all night drug enhanced parties she is part of. Made me wonder if I've been too sober myself.
5. The grittiness of travel with handcarts, covered wagons through mud and muck, up huge mountain ranges in the desert was well done. In a way, it didn't fit in with the light natured life they lived otherwise, but it added to the believability of the book.
6. Dol's relationship with her mother was very interesting and insightful. We want things to be different for both of them, but it was a huge struggle for Dol and obviously for the mother. There was no sugar coating to be found in the book.
I gave the book 3 stars instead of 4 because I felt the plot sometimes moved along too slowly with some of the main themes being repeated over and over again. And yet, as I re-read my own review, I think if you read the book, you will find a lot of great and rewarding stuff.
1. Many books are great along the way and it's not the destination that is so good, but the journey getting there. I would say that the destination in this book, where our main 19 year old opium addicted call girl realizes finally, that her whole existence and actions were seriously tainted by her addiction, was the thing that makes the book work so well. I knew that her actions were tainted by drugs along the way, but the final chapters somehow made the whole book more relevant and topical and good to me as this revelation comes to her.
2. The historical parts were excellent. The descriptions of the reactions to different murders, how the "law" operated, the tolerance for bad behavior, good men seeing call girls, good women being "flashers", and just how ribald the times really were in these mining towns, were insightful and seemed correct. Almost laughable and somehow endearing compared to today.
3. I loved the relationship Dol has with each of the other flashgirls. There is a "Sex in the City" element here that was very enjoyable and sometimes touching.
4. Dol, our narrator, is a hilarious and very intelligent girl with her insights into human behavior and comments about living the sober life away from the all night drug enhanced parties she is part of. Made me wonder if I've been too sober myself.
5. The grittiness of travel with handcarts, covered wagons through mud and muck, up huge mountain ranges in the desert was well done. In a way, it didn't fit in with the light natured life they lived otherwise, but it added to the believability of the book.
6. Dol's relationship with her mother was very interesting and insightful. We want things to be different for both of them, but it was a huge struggle for Dol and obviously for the mother. There was no sugar coating to be found in the book.
I gave the book 3 stars instead of 4 because I felt the plot sometimes moved along too slowly with some of the main themes being repeated over and over again. And yet, as I re-read my own review, I think if you read the book, you will find a lot of great and rewarding stuff.
May 4, 2011
I picked up "Missy" at the library solely based on the sweet cover art. The premise seemed, well, promising. A prostitute, who is addicted to opiates, from San Francisco travels east to a booming mining town. I went into the story understanding Dol, the main character, would be an anti-hero character. The trouble with Hannan's novel (and the reason I stopped reading it) is that it was uninteresting. A young prostitute, who's an addict, has abandoment issues. A pimp who attempts suicide in the woods gets rescued by Dol, who finds out he has a crate full of opium, later beats her face in. Mining town in the late 1800s, no character development, no setting development, and a jumpy storyline does not make me want to finish the book. Perhaps "Missy" would have been better had Hannan developed a single character more in the first 80 pages rather than jump around like an author with prose ADD.
Skip this one.
Skip this one.
October 11, 2010
My attraction to reading 'Missy' was that it's author, Chris Hannan, was my playwrighting tutor at university. I saw it in the bookstore and I was compelled to read it. I'm glad I did.
The story centres on Dol McQueen, the protagonist and narrator of the book, who's way with words is truly unique. We follow Dol as she simultaneously lands in trouble with a suicidal pimp, tracks down her alcoholic mother, and battles her own addiction to opium. And it's set in the 'Wild West' to boot!
Hannan crafts this story together well, clearly drawin on his playwrighting experiences to create such full, well-rounded characters, and I believe that I'll remember these characters for some time yet to come.
I read this book in a matter of days. It's highly readable.
The story centres on Dol McQueen, the protagonist and narrator of the book, who's way with words is truly unique. We follow Dol as she simultaneously lands in trouble with a suicidal pimp, tracks down her alcoholic mother, and battles her own addiction to opium. And it's set in the 'Wild West' to boot!
Hannan crafts this story together well, clearly drawin on his playwrighting experiences to create such full, well-rounded characters, and I believe that I'll remember these characters for some time yet to come.
I read this book in a matter of days. It's highly readable.
July 4, 2008
I never expected to like this book as much as I did. There are passages contained within that took my breath away, very well and beautifully written sentences.
This biggest surprise is the sort of yin/yang quality of this book. On one end, you have the rollicking, wild-west setting; on the other, you have a deep-thinking, opium-addicted protagonist who is searching for something just beyond her reach. All the while, you think she is searching for something very obvious, but when you get to the end, you see that you were also searching for the wrong thing. Beyond that, did I mention that Missy is laugh-out-loud hilarious?
This biggest surprise is the sort of yin/yang quality of this book. On one end, you have the rollicking, wild-west setting; on the other, you have a deep-thinking, opium-addicted protagonist who is searching for something just beyond her reach. All the while, you think she is searching for something very obvious, but when you get to the end, you see that you were also searching for the wrong thing. Beyond that, did I mention that Missy is laugh-out-loud hilarious?
July 26, 2011
Prostitutes, laudanum, mayhem and absolutely gorgeous writing set in 1862 silver-mining Nevada. 'Picaresque' doesn't begin to describe this novel, by British playwright Chris Hannan, who takes great delight in showing off the ugly, unromantic side of the American West that never would have been featured in a John Wayne movie.
The story unfolds through the eyes of Dol McQueen, a flash girl with an adventurous spirit and one hell of a laundanum habit, who comes into possession of a rum crate full of opium with a seriously dangerous origin on her way from San Francisco to the silver mines in Nevada.
Dol has a wonderfully eccentric and gorgeous way with words, and it was often like reading poetry, which I love. Of course, this also made it rather slow reading, as I would get involved with a particular passage and have to walk away and think about it for a while. Did people in 1862 really talk like this? I certainly hope so.
“The din was something like a ship being made, but instead of a conglomeration of hammers and iron the noise was built out of laughter and gin. There were too many gents for the ladies and some of the extra ones were playing a form of baseball where glasses were pitched and the batter laid into them in classy style with the leg of a chair. The broken glass went over the dancers, some of it, and some sprinkled on the table where the wedding cake was. It was looking rather forlorn, and a young lady—whose hair had been undone by liquor and her emotions—made a heartfelt plea on its behalf. The baseball players were unmoved, though.”
"The poorest miner in Virginia City won't strip off for less than four scads. Us girls might take off our shirts for six but only after we've squawked about it; we generally earn more per diem than a senator, and our reputations are less spotted in the eyes of the public."
“He was the kind you like to be alone with. He had black, black eyes and a smile that took about a minute to develop. In Nieri’s he scrupled over his choice of words, for, being a freethinker, he would not entrust the ruined girl to the care of God, not for anything. In the end he decided it would be a harmless deceit if he ventured to trust that the Eternal Mind of the Universe would guide the skirt through the dark and hopeless days ahead. I suggested that grim had a better sound than dark—grim and hopeless days ahead.”
“I’d nursed a hope that landing up in shantytown would bring Mama to her senses—that she would learn her lesson at long last and change her ways—but I could see right off the opposite had happened. I guess when Life gives a person a good kicking, it teaches them a painful lesson; it teaches them they don’t want to learn any more lessons, and it makes them harder and more fractious than ever.”
(That last one I know from experience to be true.)
The story unfolds through the eyes of Dol McQueen, a flash girl with an adventurous spirit and one hell of a laundanum habit, who comes into possession of a rum crate full of opium with a seriously dangerous origin on her way from San Francisco to the silver mines in Nevada.
Dol has a wonderfully eccentric and gorgeous way with words, and it was often like reading poetry, which I love. Of course, this also made it rather slow reading, as I would get involved with a particular passage and have to walk away and think about it for a while. Did people in 1862 really talk like this? I certainly hope so.
“The din was something like a ship being made, but instead of a conglomeration of hammers and iron the noise was built out of laughter and gin. There were too many gents for the ladies and some of the extra ones were playing a form of baseball where glasses were pitched and the batter laid into them in classy style with the leg of a chair. The broken glass went over the dancers, some of it, and some sprinkled on the table where the wedding cake was. It was looking rather forlorn, and a young lady—whose hair had been undone by liquor and her emotions—made a heartfelt plea on its behalf. The baseball players were unmoved, though.”
"The poorest miner in Virginia City won't strip off for less than four scads. Us girls might take off our shirts for six but only after we've squawked about it; we generally earn more per diem than a senator, and our reputations are less spotted in the eyes of the public."
“He was the kind you like to be alone with. He had black, black eyes and a smile that took about a minute to develop. In Nieri’s he scrupled over his choice of words, for, being a freethinker, he would not entrust the ruined girl to the care of God, not for anything. In the end he decided it would be a harmless deceit if he ventured to trust that the Eternal Mind of the Universe would guide the skirt through the dark and hopeless days ahead. I suggested that grim had a better sound than dark—grim and hopeless days ahead.”
“I’d nursed a hope that landing up in shantytown would bring Mama to her senses—that she would learn her lesson at long last and change her ways—but I could see right off the opposite had happened. I guess when Life gives a person a good kicking, it teaches them a painful lesson; it teaches them they don’t want to learn any more lessons, and it makes them harder and more fractious than ever.”
(That last one I know from experience to be true.)
April 27, 2008
Missy, 27 April 2008
By R. Hunt "Robs" (Edinburgh)
This book is amazing on every level, I totally adore it and cannot recommend it highly enough. Set in California in 1862, this is tale of the old American west with a difference - it's some 'flash-girls' that go off and have themselves a high old adventure in the middle of the Nevada desert. Oh, yes, and there's a crate of stolen 'Missy' (Opium), an evil pimp, some creepy lawless kids, and some Indians too. They've a lot to contend with.
Written using first person narration we see the world through the eyes of 19 year old prostitute Dol McQueen, who is so alive, so free and so darn sassy! Hannan has captured her voice so completely, so truthfully, the effect is startlingly magical. She will make you laugh, she will make you yearn, she will make you cry and despair.
For underneath the vibrant, audacious, and often humorous plot set against the very visceral, yet somehow mythic landscape of California, Hannan presents us with much darker themes to explore. We are taken into the world of the saloon and asked to confront the harsh social conditions under which these women lived and worked. It is a world where suicide and addiction are commonplace, a world where the the women are prevented from having truly loving and fulfilling relationships with men. It is a world where the only family these displaced women have is each other, for better or worse.
Indeed, it is the theme of family which lies at the heart of this book in its depiction of Dol's unfulfilled relationship with her alcoholic mother, which I found to be real, truthful, sadly comic and a deeply moving deptiction of the nature of addiction and the repercussions for loved ones. It is testament to Hannan's strength as a writer in the way he handles the outcome for these characters, things are left between them the only way they can be. Yet, Hannan still manages to provide us with plenty of hope too.
Look, I don't want to spoil it any further for you, please, just go out and read it for yourselves, you'll not regret it!
January 26, 2009
Thanks to my friend Ann for this one. A very unique story and I couldn't stop reading it. Dol McQueen is a 19 year old,calls herself a Flash Girl (lives in a whore house) and she had had a hard life. She is constantly looking out for her her mother. But her mother could care less about her, and is not afraid to let her know this upfront since she was a child. A hard thing to bear at such a young age of 8 or 9. Dol is more a mother to her mom, than her mom will ever be a mother to her. She is addicted to MISSY, liquid opium. It helps her to escape all the bad cards she has been dealt in life. When a pimp from San Francisco unloads a rum crate full of pure opium in her room above the saloon,she gets greedy and thinks she can take the boodle and open a business with her best friend Ness. Dol goes on quite an adventure and at times as the reader, you are shocked with what she reveals about herself and what she comes across in this fine woven tale.
August 12, 2009
Fiction A-Z Book 'H': "Missy" by Chris Hannan
Ah, sometimes the hoary old cliches prove true. And the one that proved true in this case was "Don't Judge a Book by its Cover".
"Missy" jumped out at me as I was scanning the 'Hs', because it's got a beautifully designed cover. So I read the jacket description (essentially boiling down to 'Laudanum addicted prostitute has adventures in the Old West') and saw that it was a Western written by a Scottish playwright. I was sold.
Now I have buyer's remorse. There were seeds of an exciting story here, one that could be both fun and depressing, as we follow Dol on her path of addiction and adventure. But it was written in such a boring and jumpy manner that I was never able to get into the story or the characters.
A disappointment this time.
Ah, sometimes the hoary old cliches prove true. And the one that proved true in this case was "Don't Judge a Book by its Cover".
"Missy" jumped out at me as I was scanning the 'Hs', because it's got a beautifully designed cover. So I read the jacket description (essentially boiling down to 'Laudanum addicted prostitute has adventures in the Old West') and saw that it was a Western written by a Scottish playwright. I was sold.
Now I have buyer's remorse. There were seeds of an exciting story here, one that could be both fun and depressing, as we follow Dol on her path of addiction and adventure. But it was written in such a boring and jumpy manner that I was never able to get into the story or the characters.
A disappointment this time.
July 22, 2008
For me, this book was a difficult one to rate. There were some parts that were absolutely amazing with imagery and thought, but then there were parts that just left me bored. I enjoyed Dol's voice and her experiences and I found the book to be fascinating in its description of the Old West and its mining towns. I was hooked on Dol's crazy journey through the desert and the salt flats, but there was just something about this book that prevented me from absolutely loving it. Perhaps it was the ending, which just seemed to be rushed after the build-up of the whole book and didn't quite keep in the spirit of the rest of the novel. I felt as though Hannan ran out of things for Dol to say and do; it was too neat and tidy, especially for a girl who had as much spunk and guts as Dol.
October 1, 2008
The first sentence lights the keg.
"I expect you have the consolation of religion, or the guidance of a philosophy, but when me and the girls get frazzled, or blue, or rapturous, or just awfully so-so, we shin out and buy ourselves some hats."
And so the story of Dol, a young addled opium prostitute, begins. She and a couple of the "girls" set out from San Francisco to the gold fields of the Eastern Sierra in hopes of more lucrative prospects and some good times.
A delicious treat for fans of a good rip roaring Western read. I must find out more about the author as was born in Glasgow Scotland and now lives in Edinburgh. I wonder how he was able to capture the West of the 1860's so vividly.
"I expect you have the consolation of religion, or the guidance of a philosophy, but when me and the girls get frazzled, or blue, or rapturous, or just awfully so-so, we shin out and buy ourselves some hats."
And so the story of Dol, a young addled opium prostitute, begins. She and a couple of the "girls" set out from San Francisco to the gold fields of the Eastern Sierra in hopes of more lucrative prospects and some good times.
A delicious treat for fans of a good rip roaring Western read. I must find out more about the author as was born in Glasgow Scotland and now lives in Edinburgh. I wonder how he was able to capture the West of the 1860's so vividly.
January 10, 2009
I loved the originality of this book which is the story of an opium addict in the wild west days. However, the plot becomes diluted and loses focus for me. The book could have been fantastic with some plot corrections (maybe I should be an editor?). The author has a powerful sense of language and uses it to create disturbiing scenes. Their are images from that book that will stay with me for a very long time.
Read it if you like reading stories of the wild west.
Read it if you like reading stories of the wild west.
September 2, 2008
Oh, this is a fine book. Told in the first person in unapologetic and delightful vernacular, Dol's story is at turns hilarious and tragic, full of dubious ne'er-do-wells, rascals, flash girls and deeply weird criminal lunatics. It isn't nice - it's rough, ugly, and occasionally astonishingly violent - but it's well realized and the narrator's pragmatic, enthusiastic, and often willfully misguided approach to life can't help but win you over.
July 11, 2008
A swift, violent, weird, and often funny post modern western about a box of liquid opium (here referred to as "Missy") and a bunch of protitutes (here referred to as "flash girls") who get their hands on it. Also contains evil pimps, shoot outs, a band of crafty feral children after the missy, and much fun.
February 6, 2009
What a trip- Dol is a fantastic anti-hero - funny, tragic, infuriating, streetwise, naive, loving, loyal and above all drugged out of her mind. As others have said-this is Deadwood meets all the feisty heroines you've had the pleasure to meet. And written by a Scot, male, playwright? Who would have thought!
March 27, 2009
A western that doesn't follow a cowboy, a rancher, or a sheriff, but instead profiles a "flash girl" (aka, prostitute), Dol, who's addicted to opium. The writing makes me think of the way people talk in "Deadwood" -- flowery, with curses. It's a good picture of what it's like to be an addict -- to see the flaws in others and totally miss your own.
April 6, 2009
Very interesting story of survival . . . or not . . . of a group of prostitutes who travel from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. Sex, booze, drugs, murder, love. The resiliance of the human spirit (and body) is incredible.
August 10, 2008
Such a fun read! I really hope the Dol McQueen character returns. Also, a movie version would be welcomed, particularly from those of us going through 'Deadwood' withdrawal. *shakes*
January 18, 2009
the "voice" of the narrator was pretty hard to understand in the beginning, but once i got through that it was entertaining.
April 28, 2009
Like Deadwood with chicks.
June 30, 2013
I really liked it! but, then I like books about addiction!
November 3, 2021
I really loved the main character, Dol McQueen. She absolutely grabs your attention and leaves you wondering what she’ll do next. I thought the pacing lagged a little bit towards the end of the book, but it didn’t ruin the reading experience. The depictions of native Americans weren’t great but they weren’t too terrible considering that this is very firmly in the western genre. My favorite part is the fact that Dol is a deeply flawed heroine; she’s constantly plagued by problems of her own creating which is both heartbreaking and gripping.
July 20, 2017
I really enjoyed this book, both for it's interesting setting/period detail and tough if a little confused heroine.
November 13, 2017
Entertaining, with moments of brilliance.
August 19, 2019
Unpleasant protagonist making bad decisions in the Wild West.
July 5, 2024
I tried so hard but could not finish this book despite its excellent, quippy one-liners.
January 31, 2012
I grabbed this one off the shelf knowing nothing about it.
Opium addicted, prostitute Dol follows the silver boom miners looking to make money and have a fabulous time. Nearly permanently gonged out on missy, she wanders aimlessly from party to party and her next dose. She stumbles upon a violent pimp and his huge stash of missy, steals it, and then must figure out how to get rid of it before the original owners kill her and everyone she knows.
While all of this is happening, her band of flash-girl friends is falling apart. Some are killing themselves, some are trying to get out of the business. On top of everything, Dol’s mom flits in and out of her life.
I almost abandoned this book several times. I didn’t care about Dol. Her character was static to the point of being infuriating. Her friend Ness is done with the life and wants to be a respectable business owner. She desperately tries to get Dol to come with her, but Dol keeps leading her on and using Ness’ own hopes to fund her missy addiction. The other flash-girls had no personalities other than what was laid out in the original descriptions.
Dol’s mom was interesting in her desperation. She’s been in the game too long but knows no other life. It was incredibly depressing watching her fall apart while maintaining a false ideal of being glamorous and better than anyone else. Even sadder was Dol’s ongoing attempts to win her mother’s respect and love, or at the least get some any type of attention from her.
I did like the end of the book. Dol has a great moment of introspection and it changes everything. I thought it would come sooner and even though I wasn’t too attached to the book, it was incredibly satisfying when it happened.
Opium addicted, prostitute Dol follows the silver boom miners looking to make money and have a fabulous time. Nearly permanently gonged out on missy, she wanders aimlessly from party to party and her next dose. She stumbles upon a violent pimp and his huge stash of missy, steals it, and then must figure out how to get rid of it before the original owners kill her and everyone she knows.
While all of this is happening, her band of flash-girl friends is falling apart. Some are killing themselves, some are trying to get out of the business. On top of everything, Dol’s mom flits in and out of her life.
I almost abandoned this book several times. I didn’t care about Dol. Her character was static to the point of being infuriating. Her friend Ness is done with the life and wants to be a respectable business owner. She desperately tries to get Dol to come with her, but Dol keeps leading her on and using Ness’ own hopes to fund her missy addiction. The other flash-girls had no personalities other than what was laid out in the original descriptions.
Dol’s mom was interesting in her desperation. She’s been in the game too long but knows no other life. It was incredibly depressing watching her fall apart while maintaining a false ideal of being glamorous and better than anyone else. Even sadder was Dol’s ongoing attempts to win her mother’s respect and love, or at the least get some any type of attention from her.
I did like the end of the book. Dol has a great moment of introspection and it changes everything. I thought it would come sooner and even though I wasn’t too attached to the book, it was incredibly satisfying when it happened.
June 23, 2013
This is a life or death, edge of the seat, thrill of a story set in the very Wild West of 1860s America, that takes us through California, Iowa and Arizona on the trail of a crate of opium on the run from Chinese gangsters, scalping injuns and the law themselves as our loose moralled and potty mouthed heroines avoid skirmishes, shoot-outs and violence fresh from the drifting Californian plains. But despite this, Hannan's book is entirely heart-warming and infectious as he explores quite evidently, the mother-daughter bond, a somewhat fractious one in the greatest of plush surroundings, and specifically the nature of an offspring's unflinching sense of loyalty for their maternal focal point, regardless of the state of neglect concerned. The language is gritty, coarse and slang-ridden which really did it for me in terms of being transported to a different land, which is what really successful mass market fiction does. Exactly how a middle-aged playwright from Glasgow has managed to embody a gaggle of 19th Century saloon girls and set such authentic atmosphere (not that I was witness to said period, but still heartily convinced), full of poverty-stricken desperation and cathartic, gaping surroundings is a complete mystery. But then, I guess that is a sign of a good dramatist, to be able to project the spirit and presence of another. But how he has done this and encapsulated the scene of a time and place so far removed from himself, I think is remarkable.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews