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Blue Marlin
Lee Smith brings her masterful storytelling magic to this jewel of a novella that follows Jenny, an adventurous thirteen-year-old, down to Key West for a patched-up family vacation following the discovery of her father’s illicit affair. Available for the first time as a stand-alone novella, this book centers on the Blue Marlin Motel in 1959, where Jenny, her beautiful socialite mother, and chastened father share their sunny days with movie stars who are in town to make the movie Operation Petticoat . Jenny is precocious and a bit of a sleuth, so her innocent “observations” to uncover the secrets of movie stars also end up revealing the secrets of her own family. Jenny confronts the frailty of family life while also vying for the attention of actor Tony Curtis and even a role in his movie. Smith delivers humor and honesty to her flawed characters with genuine Southern dignity.
127 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 21, 2020
55 people are currently reading
906 people want to read
About the author
Lee Smith
43 books985 followersGrowing up in the Appalachian mountains of southwestern Virginia, nine-year-old Lee Smith was already writing--and selling, for a nickel apiece--stories about her neighbors in the coal boomtown of Grundy and the nearby isolated "hollers." Since 1968, she has published eleven novels, as well as three collections of short stories, and has received many writing awards.
The sense of place infusing her novels reveals her insight into and empathy for the people and culture of Appalachia. Lee Smith was born in 1944 in Grundy, Virginia, a small coal-mining town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, not 10 miles from the Kentucky border. The Smith home sat on Main Street, and the Levisa River ran just behind it. Her mother, Virginia, was a college graduate who had come to Grundy to teach school.
Her father, Ernest, a native of the area, operated a dime store. And it was in that store that Smith's training as a writer began. Through a peephole in the ceiling of the store, Smith would watch and listen to the shoppers, paying close attention to the details of how they talked and dressed and what they said.
"I didn't know any writers," Smith says, "[but] I grew up in the midst of people just talking and talking and talking and telling these stories. My Uncle Vern, who was in the legislature, was a famous storyteller, as were others, including my dad. It was very local. I mean, my mother could make a story out of anything; she'd go to the grocery store and come home with a story."
Smith describes herself as a "deeply weird" child. She was an insatiable reader. When she was 9 or 10, she wrote her first story, about Adlai Stevenson and Jane Russell heading out west together to become Mormons--and embodying the very same themes, Smith says, that concern her even today. "You know, religion and flight, staying in one place or not staying, containment or flight--and religion." From Lee Smith's official website.
The sense of place infusing her novels reveals her insight into and empathy for the people and culture of Appalachia. Lee Smith was born in 1944 in Grundy, Virginia, a small coal-mining town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, not 10 miles from the Kentucky border. The Smith home sat on Main Street, and the Levisa River ran just behind it. Her mother, Virginia, was a college graduate who had come to Grundy to teach school.
Her father, Ernest, a native of the area, operated a dime store. And it was in that store that Smith's training as a writer began. Through a peephole in the ceiling of the store, Smith would watch and listen to the shoppers, paying close attention to the details of how they talked and dressed and what they said.
"I didn't know any writers," Smith says, "[but] I grew up in the midst of people just talking and talking and talking and telling these stories. My Uncle Vern, who was in the legislature, was a famous storyteller, as were others, including my dad. It was very local. I mean, my mother could make a story out of anything; she'd go to the grocery store and come home with a story."
Smith describes herself as a "deeply weird" child. She was an insatiable reader. When she was 9 or 10, she wrote her first story, about Adlai Stevenson and Jane Russell heading out west together to become Mormons--and embodying the very same themes, Smith says, that concern her even today. "You know, religion and flight, staying in one place or not staying, containment or flight--and religion." From Lee Smith's official website.
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March 8, 2020
3.5 A lightheaded breath of Southern air. Which after reading about murder, gulags and East Germany, I desperately needed.
Our narrator is a young girl, who loves to spy on people. Of course she sees things she shouldn't, one of which affects her own family. As a young child she is cosseted and used to doing whatever she feels. This will change too.
Her observations and descriptions are often amusing, some wise beyond her years. She and her mother share a love of movie and the stars that make them. This is a nostalgic time period, when the box office and movie magazines were all the rage. Big stars like Tony Curtis and Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, whose movie, marriages and divorces were big news.
The little family end up in Key West, under less than ideal circumstances, staying at the, yep, Blue Marlin Motel. What they find there is something that actually happened in Smith's own life.
Autobiographical fiction and s fun read, of a time gone by. Lee Smith describes in her afterward how this book mimicked her own life.
ARC from Edelweiss
3.5 A lightheaded breath of Southern air. Which after reading about murder, gulags and East Germany, I desperately needed.
Our narrator is a young girl, who loves to spy on people. Of course she sees things she shouldn't, one of which affects her own family. As a young child she is cosseted and used to doing whatever she feels. This will change too.
Her observations and descriptions are often amusing, some wise beyond her years. She and her mother share a love of movie and the stars that make them. This is a nostalgic time period, when the box office and movie magazines were all the rage. Big stars like Tony Curtis and Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, whose movie, marriages and divorces were big news.
The little family end up in Key West, under less than ideal circumstances, staying at the, yep, Blue Marlin Motel. What they find there is something that actually happened in Smith's own life.
Autobiographical fiction and s fun read, of a time gone by. Lee Smith describes in her afterward how this book mimicked her own life.
ARC from Edelweiss
Our narrator is a young girl, who loves to spy on people. Of course she sees things she shouldn't, one of which affects her own family. As a young child she is cosseted and used to doing whatever she feels. This will change too.
Her observations and descriptions are often amusing, some wise beyond her years. She and her mother share a love of movie and the stars that make them. This is a nostalgic time period, when the box office and movie magazines were all the rage. Big stars like Tony Curtis and Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, whose movie, marriages and divorces were big news.
The little family end up in Key West, under less than ideal circumstances, staying at the, yep, Blue Marlin Motel. What they find there is something that actually happened in Smith's own life.
Autobiographical fiction and s fun read, of a time gone by. Lee Smith describes in her afterward how this book mimicked her own life.
ARC from Edelweiss
3.5 A lightheaded breath of Southern air. Which after reading about murder, gulags and East Germany, I desperately needed.
Our narrator is a young girl, who loves to spy on people. Of course she sees things she shouldn't, one of which affects her own family. As a young child she is cosseted and used to doing whatever she feels. This will change too.
Her observations and descriptions are often amusing, some wise beyond her years. She and her mother share a love of movie and the stars that make them. This is a nostalgic time period, when the box office and movie magazines were all the rage. Big stars like Tony Curtis and Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, whose movie, marriages and divorces were big news.
The little family end up in Key West, under less than ideal circumstances, staying at the, yep, Blue Marlin Motel. What they find there is something that actually happened in Smith's own life.
Autobiographical fiction and s fun read, of a time gone by. Lee Smith describes in her afterward how this book mimicked her own life.
ARC from Edelweiss
August 31, 2025
Blue Marlin is a semi-autobiographical story which is narrated through the eyes of a 13-year-old girl, as her family takes a trip to Key West, so the parents can "patch up their marriage" after the father's affair.
Smith believes that "Real life is often chaotic, mysterious, unfathomable. But in fiction, you can change the order of events, emphasize or alter certain aspects of the characters—you can even create new people or take real people away in an instant. That means you can instill some sort of order to create meaning, so that the story will make sense—where real life so often does not."
The novella explores themes of human behavior and relationships, particularly the complexities of marriage, parental roles, and the challenges of finding order and meaning in life. The narrative, from an observant child's perspective, provides a semi-poignant and semi-humorous blend of "what we deserve" and the nature of reality.
It's a fine story, and shouldn't be neglected. It really deserves more attention, but it was a bit too sweet and too sentimental for my taste! 🥴 Although I'm sure there are many other people who would enjoy reading it.
Smith believes that "Real life is often chaotic, mysterious, unfathomable. But in fiction, you can change the order of events, emphasize or alter certain aspects of the characters—you can even create new people or take real people away in an instant. That means you can instill some sort of order to create meaning, so that the story will make sense—where real life so often does not."
The novella explores themes of human behavior and relationships, particularly the complexities of marriage, parental roles, and the challenges of finding order and meaning in life. The narrative, from an observant child's perspective, provides a semi-poignant and semi-humorous blend of "what we deserve" and the nature of reality.
It's a fine story, and shouldn't be neglected. It really deserves more attention, but it was a bit too sweet and too sentimental for my taste! 🥴 Although I'm sure there are many other people who would enjoy reading it.
August 11, 2025
Somewhere I saw a list of the best short fiction in English since some year. Sadly, I don't recall where. But "Blue Marlin" was on it. So was Bausch's "Peace." Both were superlative. I wish I could find that list again.
"Blue Marlin" is a coming of age novella. The narrator is a woman named Jenny who is looking back to when she was a young teenager in the '50s. She struck me as very much kin to Frankie in McCuller's "Member of the Wedding." She's impulsive, uninhibited, acts older than she is. Jenny has all the characteristics of her age -- an overdeveloped sense of self, prone to crushes and infatuations and fantasies, interesting reactions to life's events, and sudden swings in emotion.
The story focuses on a period of time when her father confesses that he has been having an affair. Jenny takes it upon herself to save the marriage. He accompanies her distant, uncommunicative parents on a drive to Key West where they stay at a motel called The Blue Marlin. When they arrive they learn that there are only a few rooms left: a movie is being made in town and all the other rooms are taken up by the actors and film crew. Jenny and Mom -- enthusiastic consumers of celebrity magazines -- are thrilled, particularly when they learn the stars staying in the other rooms include Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, and others. (The film is "Operation Petticoat" -- I remember seeing when I was a kid.)
Over the course of the novella Jenny experiences fury at her hapless parents, a crush on her sister's husband, has her first kiss, lives for a time with "holy-roller" relatives (whom she ends up liking, to her surprise), meets movies stars, acts as an extra, makes friends with Cuban strippers, talks to her dad about about Castro and Cuba (she read about it in The Weekly Reader -- which I haven't thought about in a very long time but remember very well)...
A couple of examples: Miss Lavinia Doolittle knelt but never rose from taking Communion at the altar in the Episcopal church on Palm Sunday. She died with her wafer in her mouth. I loved this, and was furious that we had missed it by attending the eleven-o’clock service rather than the nine-o’clock, just because Mama always said nine o’clock was “too early for God or anybody.”
And: My grandmother was a fool! She wore big black dresses and smelled like Menthola-tum. I used to put baby powder in her tapioca and rearrange everything on her night table whenever I went to her house, so she would think she was going crazy.
It's a light-hearted, charming read that captures both 50s and the volatility of adolescent emotions very well, with humor and generosity. The author, Lee Smith, said the story is loosely based on her own experiences at that age: Of all the stories I’ve ever written, this one is dearest to me, capturing the essence of my own childhood—the kind of unruly, spoiled only child I was; the sweetness of my troubled parents; and the magical essence of Key West, one of my favorite places in the world ever since January 1959, when these events actually occurred. I'm thankful she thought to share it with us.
Ah! Just found the source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/op...
"Blue Marlin" is a coming of age novella. The narrator is a woman named Jenny who is looking back to when she was a young teenager in the '50s. She struck me as very much kin to Frankie in McCuller's "Member of the Wedding." She's impulsive, uninhibited, acts older than she is. Jenny has all the characteristics of her age -- an overdeveloped sense of self, prone to crushes and infatuations and fantasies, interesting reactions to life's events, and sudden swings in emotion.
The story focuses on a period of time when her father confesses that he has been having an affair. Jenny takes it upon herself to save the marriage. He accompanies her distant, uncommunicative parents on a drive to Key West where they stay at a motel called The Blue Marlin. When they arrive they learn that there are only a few rooms left: a movie is being made in town and all the other rooms are taken up by the actors and film crew. Jenny and Mom -- enthusiastic consumers of celebrity magazines -- are thrilled, particularly when they learn the stars staying in the other rooms include Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, and others. (The film is "Operation Petticoat" -- I remember seeing when I was a kid.)
Over the course of the novella Jenny experiences fury at her hapless parents, a crush on her sister's husband, has her first kiss, lives for a time with "holy-roller" relatives (whom she ends up liking, to her surprise), meets movies stars, acts as an extra, makes friends with Cuban strippers, talks to her dad about about Castro and Cuba (she read about it in The Weekly Reader -- which I haven't thought about in a very long time but remember very well)...
A couple of examples: Miss Lavinia Doolittle knelt but never rose from taking Communion at the altar in the Episcopal church on Palm Sunday. She died with her wafer in her mouth. I loved this, and was furious that we had missed it by attending the eleven-o’clock service rather than the nine-o’clock, just because Mama always said nine o’clock was “too early for God or anybody.”
And: My grandmother was a fool! She wore big black dresses and smelled like Menthola-tum. I used to put baby powder in her tapioca and rearrange everything on her night table whenever I went to her house, so she would think she was going crazy.
It's a light-hearted, charming read that captures both 50s and the volatility of adolescent emotions very well, with humor and generosity. The author, Lee Smith, said the story is loosely based on her own experiences at that age: Of all the stories I’ve ever written, this one is dearest to me, capturing the essence of my own childhood—the kind of unruly, spoiled only child I was; the sweetness of my troubled parents; and the magical essence of Key West, one of my favorite places in the world ever since January 1959, when these events actually occurred. I'm thankful she thought to share it with us.
Ah! Just found the source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/op...
September 24, 2025
Lee Smith describes this novella best in her closing chapter entitled 'The Geographical Cure:'
"It makes me so happy to hold this little book in my hands - for of all the stories I've ever written, this one is dearest to me, capturing the essence of my own childhood - the kind of unruly, spoiled only child I was; the sweetness of my troubled parents; and the magical essence of Key West, one of my favorite places in the world ever since January 1959, when these events actually occurred." ~ Lee Smith
Smith goes on to say that this story is "autobiographical fiction" so not all of these events are true, but most are true enough to give us great insight into the early life and personality of a 13-year-old Lee Smith, told through the voice of the charming and headstrong Jennifer "Jenny" Dale, native of small-town Lewisville, Virginia, youngest of three daughters (an "accident") and aspiring novelist/artist/professional mermaid. This was a delightful, easy read filled with nostalgic 1950's/1960's sayings and icons, and interesting details about the heartthrob actors of the day like Cary Grant, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe as gleaned from the pages of Jenny's mother's movie magazines. Young Jenny Dale/Lee Smith reminds me a lot of one of my all time favorite literary teenagers - McCullers' Frankie Addams (The Member Of The Wedding).
I highly recommend this short read to everyone who enjoys a coming of age story, and to all Lee Smith fans. And if you've never been to Key West Florida, you should put it on your travel bucket list. There's no place I've ever visited quite like it.
"Romance was in the very air here—in the lush bright flowers, the seductive vines, the lazy twirling overhead fans, the snatches of song on the soft, soft breeze. Surely Mama and Daddy would catch it somehow. Surely they would fall in love again." ~ Jenny Dale
"It makes me so happy to hold this little book in my hands - for of all the stories I've ever written, this one is dearest to me, capturing the essence of my own childhood - the kind of unruly, spoiled only child I was; the sweetness of my troubled parents; and the magical essence of Key West, one of my favorite places in the world ever since January 1959, when these events actually occurred." ~ Lee Smith
Smith goes on to say that this story is "autobiographical fiction" so not all of these events are true, but most are true enough to give us great insight into the early life and personality of a 13-year-old Lee Smith, told through the voice of the charming and headstrong Jennifer "Jenny" Dale, native of small-town Lewisville, Virginia, youngest of three daughters (an "accident") and aspiring novelist/artist/professional mermaid. This was a delightful, easy read filled with nostalgic 1950's/1960's sayings and icons, and interesting details about the heartthrob actors of the day like Cary Grant, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe as gleaned from the pages of Jenny's mother's movie magazines. Young Jenny Dale/Lee Smith reminds me a lot of one of my all time favorite literary teenagers - McCullers' Frankie Addams (The Member Of The Wedding).
I highly recommend this short read to everyone who enjoys a coming of age story, and to all Lee Smith fans. And if you've never been to Key West Florida, you should put it on your travel bucket list. There's no place I've ever visited quite like it.
"Romance was in the very air here—in the lush bright flowers, the seductive vines, the lazy twirling overhead fans, the snatches of song on the soft, soft breeze. Surely Mama and Daddy would catch it somehow. Surely they would fall in love again." ~ Jenny Dale
June 5, 2020
Well this is an absolute delight. From the very first line you know you're reading the work of a quality storyteller.
It's 1958, Jenny's parents' marriage is in dire straits after her father's infidelity and, after spending some time with her cousins, the family are now trying to reconcile on holiday in Florida Keys.
This is a gorgeous piece of writing, full of humour and warmth. It is so convincing, I suppose because it is based on Smith's own childhood.
There's an air of Richard Yates about it - she captures that Mad Men era so well. Only, rather than a Don Draper story, imagine we're getting the world through the eyes of his daughter Sally.
A cracking read - my only complaint is I wanted much more than the 120 pages she gives us!
It's 1958, Jenny's parents' marriage is in dire straits after her father's infidelity and, after spending some time with her cousins, the family are now trying to reconcile on holiday in Florida Keys.
This is a gorgeous piece of writing, full of humour and warmth. It is so convincing, I suppose because it is based on Smith's own childhood.
There's an air of Richard Yates about it - she captures that Mad Men era so well. Only, rather than a Don Draper story, imagine we're getting the world through the eyes of his daughter Sally.
A cracking read - my only complaint is I wanted much more than the 120 pages she gives us!
June 28, 2022
Precious little novella!
Set in the 1950s, a 13 year old girl catches her father having an affair. Her mother has a nervous breakdown and is prescribed a Geographical Cure- they have to go to Key West to repair their family.
Along the way they find God, meet celebrities and appear in a movie.
Lee Smith is a great author.
Set in the 1950s, a 13 year old girl catches her father having an affair. Her mother has a nervous breakdown and is prescribed a Geographical Cure- they have to go to Key West to repair their family.
Along the way they find God, meet celebrities and appear in a movie.
Lee Smith is a great author.
May 28, 2025
Such perfect storytelling by Lee Smith. Blue Marlin is a coming of age story about Jenny, a "surprise child" growing up in VA to a Mama whose previous two girls had "already sapped her strength and lowered her resistance." Jenny is curious, so she wanders the neighborhood to spy on neighbors. She also enjoys writing.
Jenny is bold (and sometimes crass, as young people can sometimes be), but also naive and innocent. Her character, which is so realistic, makes a great story. I laughed aloud so many times because Jenny is a spitfire kid who wants to "be good" and please God so that he will answer her prayers and help her parents marriage.
There are many allusions--the Cold War, bomb shelters, Noxema, Newports and Winstons, Hollywood stars, strip clubs, Buicks, 4-H club, newspapers, books like Peyton Place, old films like and a plethora of things that create the mid-century setting. For readers my age, the book provides a walk through youth again.
Although the story is Jennys, it is equally a story about her parents and her father's affair. The first line in the book is "In 1958, when my father had his famous affair with Carroll Byrd, I knew it before anybody." Through that, we learn more about her parents, her relatives, and Jenny. The novella's title refers to a roadtrip Jenny and her parents take to Key West in a new car her dad purchased, with the goal a new adventure healing the broken things. What happens at the hotel is enchanting and reminds me of the Hollywood my mother knew and loved (she had a locket as a teen with Cary Grant in it which I inherited).
I loved this sweet little book. The quirky cousin Glenda who always said "Jesus will look after you, honey." The delinquent Uncle Mason: "You're bound to love most the one who loves you least, and least deserves it." The heartthrob BIL Tom. The Hollywood Actors and Starlettes. Here are some of my favorite quotes:
"Nobody cool wore blue jeans yet, this was before they got popular. Then, in Repass, blue jeans meant you were poor."
"Sometimes I walked around the corner to the big scary church and prayed with the Catholics. I loved the gory statues and the candles. The Jesus in the Catholic statues was a lot less than the one back at Saint Michaels, and certainly than the Jesus in my cousin's church in Repass, who looked like a Ken doll. This Jesus's brow was encircled by thorns, and he was always bleeding. It was hard to imagine what he would think of anything. He was too busy suffering."
I also loved the author's note at the end called the geographical cure; it was so interesting. At first I gave this book 4.5 stars, but the more I think on it (and writing this review), it is definitely five. Perfect writing and a sweet little book.
Jenny is bold (and sometimes crass, as young people can sometimes be), but also naive and innocent. Her character, which is so realistic, makes a great story. I laughed aloud so many times because Jenny is a spitfire kid who wants to "be good" and please God so that he will answer her prayers and help her parents marriage.
There are many allusions--the Cold War, bomb shelters, Noxema, Newports and Winstons, Hollywood stars, strip clubs, Buicks, 4-H club, newspapers, books like Peyton Place, old films like and a plethora of things that create the mid-century setting. For readers my age, the book provides a walk through youth again.
Although the story is Jennys, it is equally a story about her parents and her father's affair. The first line in the book is "In 1958, when my father had his famous affair with Carroll Byrd, I knew it before anybody." Through that, we learn more about her parents, her relatives, and Jenny. The novella's title refers to a roadtrip Jenny and her parents take to Key West in a new car her dad purchased, with the goal a new adventure healing the broken things. What happens at the hotel is enchanting and reminds me of the Hollywood my mother knew and loved (she had a locket as a teen with Cary Grant in it which I inherited).
I loved this sweet little book. The quirky cousin Glenda who always said "Jesus will look after you, honey." The delinquent Uncle Mason: "You're bound to love most the one who loves you least, and least deserves it." The heartthrob BIL Tom. The Hollywood Actors and Starlettes. Here are some of my favorite quotes:
"Nobody cool wore blue jeans yet, this was before they got popular. Then, in Repass, blue jeans meant you were poor."
"Sometimes I walked around the corner to the big scary church and prayed with the Catholics. I loved the gory statues and the candles. The Jesus in the Catholic statues was a lot less than the one back at Saint Michaels, and certainly than the Jesus in my cousin's church in Repass, who looked like a Ken doll. This Jesus's brow was encircled by thorns, and he was always bleeding. It was hard to imagine what he would think of anything. He was too busy suffering."
I also loved the author's note at the end called the geographical cure; it was so interesting. At first I gave this book 4.5 stars, but the more I think on it (and writing this review), it is definitely five. Perfect writing and a sweet little book.
June 15, 2025
This is the last of the Margaret Renkl-recommended-novellas my former colleagues and I have read this year. This is the story of thirteen-year-old Jenny, amateur sleuth, yearning to be more grown up so her brother-in-law will fall in love with her, sharing a love of movie stars with her glamorous mother, happily immersed in her small town life in Virginia in the late 1950’s. Part of her sleuthing uncovers her father’s affair, which she keeps secret, until life unravels.
Her father’s affair, a wayward uncle’s sudden death, her mother’s breakdown, and her exile to South Carolina are just a few of the events that catch Jenny by surprise, her life reeling, leaving her determined to figure things out. The author’s writing seamlessly links them one after the other, always with a few side ventures by Jenny as she navigates what life has become.
About seventy pages in, the author brings the family to Key West, Florida, so the parents can “patch their marriage up,” a seemingly impossible task, with her father hollowed out, her mother, almost unrecognizable, very few words spoken to each other. When they arrive to the Blue Marlin Motel, they discover “Operation Petticoat” is being filmed nearby with Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, and the entire cast and crew staying there. For the movie-magazine-loving mother and daughter, who revere all the Hollywood stars and know the tiniest details about them, this is a dream come true. They carve out a daily structure of fishing, roaming around and lounging while they wait each day for their beloved movie stars to return from filming. And then they are invited to be in a crowd scene.
While the minor characters moved about in this novella, and most were very intriguing, Jenny, of course, is the heroine, tasked with facilitating her parent’s reconciliation. Sometimes falling into mishaps, sometimes running toward them, she survives a difficult year while storing up experiences and observations, remembering her parents’ love and their time in Key West, that will see her through the rest of her life.
Her father’s affair, a wayward uncle’s sudden death, her mother’s breakdown, and her exile to South Carolina are just a few of the events that catch Jenny by surprise, her life reeling, leaving her determined to figure things out. The author’s writing seamlessly links them one after the other, always with a few side ventures by Jenny as she navigates what life has become.
About seventy pages in, the author brings the family to Key West, Florida, so the parents can “patch their marriage up,” a seemingly impossible task, with her father hollowed out, her mother, almost unrecognizable, very few words spoken to each other. When they arrive to the Blue Marlin Motel, they discover “Operation Petticoat” is being filmed nearby with Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, and the entire cast and crew staying there. For the movie-magazine-loving mother and daughter, who revere all the Hollywood stars and know the tiniest details about them, this is a dream come true. They carve out a daily structure of fishing, roaming around and lounging while they wait each day for their beloved movie stars to return from filming. And then they are invited to be in a crowd scene.
While the minor characters moved about in this novella, and most were very intriguing, Jenny, of course, is the heroine, tasked with facilitating her parent’s reconciliation. Sometimes falling into mishaps, sometimes running toward them, she survives a difficult year while storing up experiences and observations, remembering her parents’ love and their time in Key West, that will see her through the rest of her life.
February 26, 2024
Delightful! Enjoyed every bit of this tiny book. Lovely beach read!
June 30, 2024
This little book was simply delightful. The narrator, Jenny, is a kinda spunky, kinda Jesus-y young girl in the middle of her parent’s marriage coming a little off the tracks. All the characters were fun, the settings were lively, and it was the perfect little summer read.
March 13, 2022
Lee Smith is a treasure. I sink right into her books and lose myself. Favorite line: “I had to take a Goody powder and go straight to bed.”
July 8, 2023
I had the distinct pleasure of recently hearing Lee Smith speak and read parts of her new book, Silver Alert. I was already falling in love with her writing after reading her memoir Dimestore, and I find myself drawn back to her about every third book I read! Well this short,adorable book, Blue Marlin, did not disappoint. Lee Smith has a unique way of creating larger-than-life characters who jump from the pages of the novels and become your friends, or your relatives, or people from your past, or people you wish you knew in real life! Her characters are fully developed and leave you wondering what happened to them after the book ends!! This book is based on a real time in her life with her typical quirky embellishments and the actual unbelievable truth. Her writing style is so rich and accessible. It makes me laugh out loud one minute and tear up the next. Thanks for another great read, Lee Smith.
“Though this ought to be the end of the story, it’s not. One more thing happened. One more thing is always happening, isn’t it? This is the reason I have found life to be harder than fiction,where you can make it all work out to suit you and put The End wherever you please.”
And from the afterword:
“During a lifetime of writing, I have always felt that I can tell the truth better in fiction than nonfiction. Real life is often chaotic, mysterious, unfathomable. But in fiction, you can change the order of events, emphasize or alter certain aspects of the characters-you can even create new people or take people away in an instant. That means you can instill some kind of order to create meaning, so that the story will make sense- where real life so often does not. Fiction is also a heightened reality- you up the ante in order to grab the reader’s attention and hold it, increasing or emphasizing the conflict, adjusting the pace of the story accordingly, often making it conform to the old tried and truly satisfying plot sequence of beginning, middle, end.”
“Daddy and Mama had apparently been back to Key West once before (before I was born! I couldn’t even imagine this- life without me! It gave me a sick headache; I had to take a Goody Powder and go right to bed).”
I can’t imagine life without you either, Lee Smith! Thanks for sharing your gift of storytelling with us!
“Though this ought to be the end of the story, it’s not. One more thing happened. One more thing is always happening, isn’t it? This is the reason I have found life to be harder than fiction,where you can make it all work out to suit you and put The End wherever you please.”
And from the afterword:
“During a lifetime of writing, I have always felt that I can tell the truth better in fiction than nonfiction. Real life is often chaotic, mysterious, unfathomable. But in fiction, you can change the order of events, emphasize or alter certain aspects of the characters-you can even create new people or take people away in an instant. That means you can instill some kind of order to create meaning, so that the story will make sense- where real life so often does not. Fiction is also a heightened reality- you up the ante in order to grab the reader’s attention and hold it, increasing or emphasizing the conflict, adjusting the pace of the story accordingly, often making it conform to the old tried and truly satisfying plot sequence of beginning, middle, end.”
“Daddy and Mama had apparently been back to Key West once before (before I was born! I couldn’t even imagine this- life without me! It gave me a sick headache; I had to take a Goody Powder and go right to bed).”
I can’t imagine life without you either, Lee Smith! Thanks for sharing your gift of storytelling with us!
January 29, 2023
I am a sucker for southern fiction and I loved this book!!! I’ll be checking out more by this author. It is a tiny book though, so if you can find it at the library (or borrow it from someone you know 😉) I highly recommend!
August 28, 2023
Lee Smith calls Blue Marlin “autobiographical fiction … with an emphasis on fiction.” It’s 1958 and Jenny, a 13 YO girl who has been sent off to live with her Bible-thumping relatives while her parents sort out their sordid lives, is sitting in the back seat of a new Cadillac with fins while her parents chain-smoke all the way to Key West. It’s a work of autobiographical fiction “with the emphasis on fiction.” In the epilogue Smith sorts it all out and I never would have guessed which of the elements was fact and which was fiction, which I guess is the point. It’s a delightful read.
February 21, 2024
Perfect little novella for an on-location read. Even if I wasn’t lounging on a beach in Key West I would still say the writing was excellent. Being able to see all the places and things named in the book made it even better.
July 17, 2025
Sweet little, fast and easy book that the author says is "autobiographical fiction." Many details were only inspired by her teen memories; some truly happened, and some are pure fiction. There are so many tough reads out right now that this is a breath of fresh air--poignant with many funny places. I also enjoyed it because of the era I grew up in. Many things were familiar.
July 12, 2025
A perfect little novella
July 22, 2020
Very interesting little story based on the author's life growing up in the 50s. If you are nostalgic like I am, you'll enjoy. Cute cover.
September 27, 2020
Just the best.
“This is the reason I have found life to be harder than fiction, where you can make it all work out to suit you and put The End wherever you please.”
“This is the reason I have found life to be harder than fiction, where you can make it all work out to suit you and put The End wherever you please.”
April 7, 2025
Nostalgic, sentimental short story about a young girl and her parents. I enjoyed it for a pleasant change of pace.
May 11, 2020
Lee Smith creates characters you wish were in your own life. A fun book.
April 28, 2020
Like everything else Lee Smith has written and I’ve read, I loved this book. Her storytelling, her sense of place, her characters are all amazing to experience. When a “throw-away” line near the end is that a headstone in the cemetery said, “I told you I was sick” - just read this book. It’s funny.
April 25, 2020
Whether she is telling her own story, as she did in DIMESTORE, or bringing to life on the page the rich characters of her imagination, Lee Smith has a gift. I love that she took us to Key West in the 1950s for this exquisite novella, since I visited this magical place for the first time last year. I could see the colorful houses and people and taste the Cuban cuisine as 13-year-old Jenny explores the island on her own. And what a creative coup to set her parents' "geographical cure" for their failing marriage in the middle of a film crew's work on the 1959 movie "Operation Petticoat." A triumph in just over 100 pages. Kudos! (And I'm so glad that novellas are back in vogue!)
July 13, 2020
Cute novella about a precocious teen in the 50's consumed by movie stars, the first kiss and growing up.
June 11, 2020
“Coming of Age in Hollywood’s Golden Age”
At the heart of this magical novella is a three-way love affair between a thirteen-year-old girl named Jenny Dale and her parents, whose marriage is in trouble. It’s the tail-end of the 1950s, and Jenny and her mother are enamored of “the lives of the stars.” Their shared preoccupation with Hollywood gossip irritates Jenny’s father, a mill owner and small-town intellectual too grounded by civic responsibility to be seduced by phantasms of celluloid. However, Jenny’s father is not immune to romance, and he has become deeply involved with a local artist and iconoclast named Carroll Byrd.
Lee Smith once explained that she became a writer in order to live multiple lives. And what a rich cast of characters we meet in this one novella, including several who have stepped out of the silver screen and onto the page. But the main attraction is the adolescent narrator, Jenny, who as Smith explains in an afterward, embodies “the essence” of the author’s own childhood, the “kind of unruly, spoiled only child” that she was. In this compressed bildungsroman, Jenny begins the painful and beautiful transformation into the author she will later become by chronicling the collapse of her parents’ marriage, and fervently imagining its restoration in the tropes of Hollywood romance and tabloid gossip.
This slim volume is full to the brim with rewards: teenagers French kissing in a bomb shelter, Tony Curtis riding atop a pink submarine, all the sublime tackiness of Key West, bushels of wicked humor and plainspoken lyricism. But the story’s main gift is the chance to be thirteen again, the opportunity to experience that kind of exuberant innocence and its loss.
If you’ve ever read a book by Lee Smith, you know what it is to fall in love with this author, because she makes you fall in love with life. With Blue Marlin, be prepared to fall and fall hard.
At the heart of this magical novella is a three-way love affair between a thirteen-year-old girl named Jenny Dale and her parents, whose marriage is in trouble. It’s the tail-end of the 1950s, and Jenny and her mother are enamored of “the lives of the stars.” Their shared preoccupation with Hollywood gossip irritates Jenny’s father, a mill owner and small-town intellectual too grounded by civic responsibility to be seduced by phantasms of celluloid. However, Jenny’s father is not immune to romance, and he has become deeply involved with a local artist and iconoclast named Carroll Byrd.
Lee Smith once explained that she became a writer in order to live multiple lives. And what a rich cast of characters we meet in this one novella, including several who have stepped out of the silver screen and onto the page. But the main attraction is the adolescent narrator, Jenny, who as Smith explains in an afterward, embodies “the essence” of the author’s own childhood, the “kind of unruly, spoiled only child” that she was. In this compressed bildungsroman, Jenny begins the painful and beautiful transformation into the author she will later become by chronicling the collapse of her parents’ marriage, and fervently imagining its restoration in the tropes of Hollywood romance and tabloid gossip.
This slim volume is full to the brim with rewards: teenagers French kissing in a bomb shelter, Tony Curtis riding atop a pink submarine, all the sublime tackiness of Key West, bushels of wicked humor and plainspoken lyricism. But the story’s main gift is the chance to be thirteen again, the opportunity to experience that kind of exuberant innocence and its loss.
If you’ve ever read a book by Lee Smith, you know what it is to fall in love with this author, because she makes you fall in love with life. With Blue Marlin, be prepared to fall and fall hard.
January 16, 2024
A charming little book that made me laugh several times. This is my first try at a Lee Smith story, and it reminds me of the convoluted Southern tales from such writers as T.R. Pearson. Although it includes suicide, marital infidelity, sex workers, a homicide and even some teenage necking in a bomb shelter, the overall tone is light.
Jenny lives in Virginia with her parents -- her flighty mama and her serious daddy. She spies on their neighbors and is particularly fascinated by an artist named Carroll. When Jenny's rough uncle Mason is killed in a barroom brawl, her mama is devastated, and then devastated all over again when no one can locate Jenny's daddy. He finally turns up with Carroll, because it turns out they have been having an affair.
Mama, in her depression, goes into the hospital and Jenny goes to a hyper-religious relative's house for a while. Then -- finally! around page 81 of this 123-page book -- Jenny's mama and daddy decide to try to patch up their marriage by driving down to Key West with Jenny in the back seat. They check into the motel that lends this book its title and discover it's full of movie people filming "Operation Petticoat."
The book ends about the way you'd think, but then -- and this is the best part -- Smith explains in an epilogue how much of her fiction is based on fact and that's fun to see too. I am sorry her real daddy didn't stop for her at Weeki Wachee Springs, because the one flaw in this book is that Jenny says she saw the mermaids wearing air tanks (they don't) and a shark (saltwater species) swimming in the springs (a freshwater environment). I docked the book one star for those two errors.
Jenny lives in Virginia with her parents -- her flighty mama and her serious daddy. She spies on their neighbors and is particularly fascinated by an artist named Carroll. When Jenny's rough uncle Mason is killed in a barroom brawl, her mama is devastated, and then devastated all over again when no one can locate Jenny's daddy. He finally turns up with Carroll, because it turns out they have been having an affair.
Mama, in her depression, goes into the hospital and Jenny goes to a hyper-religious relative's house for a while. Then -- finally! around page 81 of this 123-page book -- Jenny's mama and daddy decide to try to patch up their marriage by driving down to Key West with Jenny in the back seat. They check into the motel that lends this book its title and discover it's full of movie people filming "Operation Petticoat."
The book ends about the way you'd think, but then -- and this is the best part -- Smith explains in an epilogue how much of her fiction is based on fact and that's fun to see too. I am sorry her real daddy didn't stop for her at Weeki Wachee Springs, because the one flaw in this book is that Jenny says she saw the mermaids wearing air tanks (they don't) and a shark (saltwater species) swimming in the springs (a freshwater environment). I docked the book one star for those two errors.
September 16, 2025
"I saw myself as an island with time stretching out before me and behind me, all around me like a deep lake, mysterious and never-ending, like Lake Nantahala, where I lost my ring, where a person might lose anything. This precarious view made everything that happened to me seem very, very important. I had to see as much as I could see, learn as much as I could learn, feel as much as I could feel. I had to live like crazy all the time, an attitude that would get me into lots of trouble later." -Jenny, from the novel
Our Page Turners' September selection, Blue Marlin is the story of a feisty 13-year-old girl trying to cope with her father's infidelity and her mother's depression. I found Jenny to be very likeable and believable as a teenager with the usual growing pains with added on family dysfunction. I was cheering her on as I often do with youngsters in fiction, probably a result of having taught those of a similar age.
One of my favorite parts is when the family tries a "geographical cure," a trip from their home in Virginia to Key West. Some Florida landmarks along the way were very familiar to me and I enjoyed visiting Key West again vicariously. The 1959 time setting brought back memories to this baby-boomer with mentions of current events and popular culture of the time, like movies, songs and celebrities.
I also liked the last portion of the novella in which the author tells how her own youth was the inspiration for the story. She calls it "autobiographical fiction, with the emphasis on fiction."
I am rating Blue Marlin a 5. I'd definitely recommend it for middle schoolers and above...and/or former schoolteachers!
Our Page Turners' September selection, Blue Marlin is the story of a feisty 13-year-old girl trying to cope with her father's infidelity and her mother's depression. I found Jenny to be very likeable and believable as a teenager with the usual growing pains with added on family dysfunction. I was cheering her on as I often do with youngsters in fiction, probably a result of having taught those of a similar age.
One of my favorite parts is when the family tries a "geographical cure," a trip from their home in Virginia to Key West. Some Florida landmarks along the way were very familiar to me and I enjoyed visiting Key West again vicariously. The 1959 time setting brought back memories to this baby-boomer with mentions of current events and popular culture of the time, like movies, songs and celebrities.
I also liked the last portion of the novella in which the author tells how her own youth was the inspiration for the story. She calls it "autobiographical fiction, with the emphasis on fiction."
I am rating Blue Marlin a 5. I'd definitely recommend it for middle schoolers and above...and/or former schoolteachers!
Read
June 30, 2020Jenny the narrator kept reminding me of somebody and then towards the end I realized it was Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. Wise beyond her years, but still too young grasp all that lies in the adult world.
I had never heard of this book by Lee Smith. Seems it's been re-released from an earlier format into the novella. I love a good Southern story and this one was fitting that it brought in Florida in the end. (I have been to Weeki Wachee mermaid place twice... it is still stuck in the late 1950s.)
I also was that strange child infatuated with old Hollywood, which I guess was current Hollywood when this story takes place. So I loved watching Cary Grant from the hotel balcony and eavesdropping on Tony Curtis talking to Janet Leigh. (Hope Jamie Leigh Curtis reads this.)
And best of all, of course, is the way Lee Writes. I's probably love reading 18-wheeler maintenance manuals if she wrote them.
Page 78
"All the way down the Keys, what we did not say seemed as real as what we did say, like the shadow railroad alongside the highway with its ghost bridges spanning the sea."
Page 55
"Lots of things had covers in cousin Glenda's house- the toaster, the Mix-master and the blender wore matching pique jackets with rickrack around the edges, the Kleenex box and the Jergens lotion bottle had crocheted skirts; the toilets featured big fuzzy pads."
This is a replica of my Aunt Opal's Winston-Salem kitchen and bathroom. I hated how naked our Kleenex and Jergens in Raleigh looked.
June 25, 2020
Lee Smith’s Blue Marlin will make you smile. Jenny, the 13-year old narrator, takes us on a journey, both literal and emotional. She is not the first child to feel responsible for her parents’ marital problems and equally hopeful she can bring about their reconciliation. The precocious aspiring writer, however, does have a unique point of view and an insatiable curiosity.
“I had to see as much as I could see, learn as much as I could learn, fell as much as I could feel. I had to live like crazy all the time, an attitude that would get me into lots of trouble,” she tell us. And, oh, how you will enjoy reading about her many “adventures”.
Set in 1958, Blue Marlin will trigger feelings of nostalgia as Lee Smith weaves in details that anyone who grew up in the 50’s will particularly enjoy. Jenny and her mother’s fascination with movie stars of the era will evoke memories of what now feel like simpler times.
Lee Smith provides a gift to writers in her epilogue entitled “The Geographical Cure”. She describes Blue Marlin as a work of “autobiographical fiction”. This short piece beautifully captures the way authors take their real-life experiences and weave them into a story. She says, “I have always felt that I can tell the truth better in fiction than non-fiction.” Thank you, Lee Smith.
“I had to see as much as I could see, learn as much as I could learn, fell as much as I could feel. I had to live like crazy all the time, an attitude that would get me into lots of trouble,” she tell us. And, oh, how you will enjoy reading about her many “adventures”.
Set in 1958, Blue Marlin will trigger feelings of nostalgia as Lee Smith weaves in details that anyone who grew up in the 50’s will particularly enjoy. Jenny and her mother’s fascination with movie stars of the era will evoke memories of what now feel like simpler times.
Lee Smith provides a gift to writers in her epilogue entitled “The Geographical Cure”. She describes Blue Marlin as a work of “autobiographical fiction”. This short piece beautifully captures the way authors take their real-life experiences and weave them into a story. She says, “I have always felt that I can tell the truth better in fiction than non-fiction.” Thank you, Lee Smith.
May 23, 2020
This was quite the quirky read.
The book came recommended to me from two sources. The first being a long-trusted bookseller at my favorite indie bookshop. And then the very next day, it was featured in the Variety section of the local paper as THE quarantine read.
Partially autobiographical, the story comes out of a trip that the author and her family took to Key West, Florida in 1959. Both the author and the narrator of the story take this trip at the age of thirteen.
It is true of every book that it may not be to everyone’s taste. This book may not be for people looking to avoid language ( a word that rhymes with ‘witch’ is used multiple times), or themes like adultery or strip clubs.
For me, it was part of the quirkiness to see these things through the lens of a thirteen-year-old child.
I now have probably scared off half the people reading this review while intriguing the other half. If you are part of the intrigued portion or are on the fence about reading it, I highly recommend watching the short video that I will link here of the author talking about her childhood and the inspiration for the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGwO_...
The book came recommended to me from two sources. The first being a long-trusted bookseller at my favorite indie bookshop. And then the very next day, it was featured in the Variety section of the local paper as THE quarantine read.
Partially autobiographical, the story comes out of a trip that the author and her family took to Key West, Florida in 1959. Both the author and the narrator of the story take this trip at the age of thirteen.
It is true of every book that it may not be to everyone’s taste. This book may not be for people looking to avoid language ( a word that rhymes with ‘witch’ is used multiple times), or themes like adultery or strip clubs.
For me, it was part of the quirkiness to see these things through the lens of a thirteen-year-old child.
I now have probably scared off half the people reading this review while intriguing the other half. If you are part of the intrigued portion or are on the fence about reading it, I highly recommend watching the short video that I will link here of the author talking about her childhood and the inspiration for the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGwO_...
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