Rubyfruit Jungle in Around the World in 80 Books

Jun 04, 2020 Nadine in NY Jones rated it liked it

Shelves: era-mid-20th-c, scum-lit, classic, coming-of-age

Somehow I missed reading this book back in the 80s, not sure how. It’s too bad I didn’t read this when I was younger, I think I would have liked it a lot more then. All this anger and stubbornness just feels exhausting to middle-aged me, but it would have lit a fire under me back then!

I thought this would be fun and entertaining, like the sneaky pie brown books. It was not. It’s sort of a stream of consciousness story told by an adolescent girl living in absolutely miserable circumstances who ...more

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Jul 22, 2007 Vicky rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novel, lesbians, own-pre-konmari

Molly Bolt is such an arrogant narrator that I found it hard to like her but the prose is conversational and some of the episodes are ridiculous (the grapefruits) that it can be engaging to follow just because it's so unlike my experience. Aside from some eyebrow-arching offensive parts, the main thing that bothered me about Molly Bolt is how non-introspective she is, like how, even for the reader who is inside her point-of-view, she sets up a tough exterior and is super proud and confident and Molly Bolt is such an arrogant narrator that I found it hard to like her but the prose is conversational and some of the episodes are ridiculous (the grapefruits) that it can be engaging to follow just because it's so unlike my experience. Aside from some eyebrow-arching offensive parts, the main thing that bothered me about Molly Bolt is how non-introspective she is, like how, even for the reader who is inside her point-of-view, she sets up a tough exterior and is super proud and confident and gets what she wants seemingly all the time.

Apparently Molly is a tomboy who is also feminine (?), athletic, gets straight As, wants to be the president but later wants to be a film director, loses her virginity to a beautiful girl in 6th grade, gets scholarships, leaves her school in Florida after it's known that she's been intimate with her roommate, goes to New York City homeless but later, in less than a paragraph and after some brief hustling, she convinces NYU to give her a scholarship.

It's funny to me how often she states her lesbian identity or whatever else in an easy matter-of-fact tone. I guess it comes off as "proud" and maybe "life-affirming" that she's being who she is, but I am more interested in knowing what she's thinking during all of this—unless she doesn't have those thoughts. It's just like, she's confronted by the Dean of Women who asks her about the nature of her relationship with the roommate and Molly's like, "I'm a lesbian". No hesitation.

I lose track in the second half but I think Molly seduces two older women. One of them is Polina, an archaeologist, who is married but is having an affair with this [male] English professor who Molly also seduces! (in order to get to know Polina better or something) Polina has a daughter named Alice, who Molly gets involved with as well! At first Polina doesn't wanna, but Molly is so assertive that she basically presses her body over Polina until Polina gives in. . .

The only scene in which I sympathized with Molly—and I wish there were more scenes like this—is when her father dies and she wasn't seen crying at the funeral or anything, but later when her mother and grandmother are out grocery shopping, Molly is home alone, looking through her father's stuff and remembering him. As soon as she hears her mother and grandmother pulling in to come inside, she rushes back to the kitchen, pretending to have been reading the entire time. They ask what's wrong with her because they see that her eyes are wet and red and she says it's because she's reading a sad book, is all. ...more

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