Sparks Fly
Born in Georgia in 1949, Gwyn Hyman Rubio earned a degree in English from Florida St., then went into the Peace Corps, assigned to Costa Rica, where she met her husband, an epileptic. They moved to Kentucky, the setting of her first novel, Icy Sparks, published in 1998. It’s the first person account of a beautiful girl, ten when the book begins in the mid ‘50’s. She lives on her loving grandparents’ farm, her parents having died young. When stressed she suffers twitches, jerks and the uncontrollable urge to lash out verbally. This eventually gets her, in effect, expelled from school. She also spends a few months in an institution. She is then home-schooled by a middle age female shop owner, her only friend. Highly intelligent, keenly observant, she spends a lot of time exploring the rural area. The narrative follows her to the age of 16, the brief epilogue, where Tourette’s Syndrome is mentioned for the first time, to her college graduation. Although repetitive and occasionally tedious, it is frequently touching. Usually alone with her thoughts, the girl is wise beyond her years. At one point she muses: “… did everyone in this world have two truths, two sides — one, in view, the other, hidden?…” Eventually she comes to believe all is one, everything fits — even misfits. The work’s heart is always in the right place. Although not an easy read, the 308 pages of the hardcover edition challenging, it is worthwhile. The main characters are richly drawn. The novel’s main flaw involves the brief stay at the institution. Curiously, she is released without having made any progress. My hunch is the segment serves to introduce her to those more unfortunate than herself, to broaden her horizons. 441 users at Amazon have rated Icy Sparks, forging to a consensus of 4.2 on a scale of five. I’ll go with 3.25. The title is her name, so-called because her skin at birth was so cold. The novel is geared toward those who prefer serious fiction. The characters are God-fearing. I was glad it didn’t get technical medically. Rubio has published only two other novels. Icy Sparks was selling only modestly until it was catapulted by its selection to Oprah’s Book Club. Her dad. Mac Hyman, wrote the celebrated novel No Time for Sergeants. (Facts from Wiki)
The left is again blaming the surge in shootings on the availability of guns. Fair enough, but why isn’t anyone questioning why so many are choosing to kill? And it’s not only gun violence, as evidenced by the news. What has infected these people? I hope things haven’t really changed, that it is just the 24/7 news cycle making it seem we are nearing societal collapse.
Here’s a new book by James O’Keefe, whom the left has tried desperately to take down only to have lost every court case brought against him:
Lucked out this morning on my return from Stop n Shop. The most favorable winter parking spot was available, which enabled today’s virtually stress free session of the floating book shop. I sat in the car, out of the cold, for most of the first two hours. My thanks to Ira, who bought the huge WWE pictorial Unscripted; and to The Quiet Man, who purchased a kids illustrated version of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson; and to the woman who selected The Imbroglio at the Villa Pozzi by Clara Benson; and to the one who donated a bunch of kids books in Russian and to the one who chose three of them; and to Wolf, who bought two books in Russian and The Kasha Knish Caper by Jason Gordon. I hadn’t expected to see him until April. Why he left his winter home in Florida so soon is beyond me. “Why not?” he said.
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