Kite Maker

by Candace Lee Van Auken

Melvina, a country kid, drives up to a women's bar in the city in a spiffy new Cadillac convertible - a tough-acting dyke who s never had a girlfriend - an innocent who lies a lot to hide her past. None of Melvina's new-found friends know what to make of her, but they can't help but be intrigued as she entices Sal to drive off with her in search of a long lost friend.

Genres: Fiction

206 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1991

Reviews

[Candace]

Read it? Heck, I wrote it. I'm not going to review or rate it -- just too narcissistic for my tastes.

[Bill · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book with a lot of heart, that also suffers from a lot of problems. The characters are introduced in rapid fire and with no description as to their height, race, age, anything. This is a pretty significant problem as their racial identities are referenced to often. This leaves the reader constantly asking, "Wait, what do you look like again and why does that matter?" The ages of the characters is also left ambiguous. I assumed they were in their 40s for most of the book, but then a reference would be made to "things that happened long ago" or how old a character looked. This became distracting.

On the other hand, the story is both sweet and cathartic. Melvina and Sal both have stories to tell and are worth hearing. There are romantic scenes in the book that carry the weaker parts of the narrative.

Overall, you can tell this was the author's first book. There are significant flaws in the writing. But you can also tell, the book has a lot of heart. And that makes up for a lot.

[kaitlynn pearson · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was one of the weirdest nooks i’ve ever read. i’m definitely not part of the demographic. but i did like the diversity (and some of the super romantic girl on girl scenes) but i wasn’t a fan of many of the characters. i was constantly confused because there is a huge cast of characters in it. i didn’t understand how old each of the characters were, maybe in just dumb or maybe the writing wasn’t that well. to be fair this was the first and only book by this author