Flutie
   Diane Glancy
  1998 Moyer Bell, Rhode Island USA
   ISBN: 1559212128


Flutie faces the poverty & turmoil of her family in ever-increasing silence. She is not only afraid to speak, she is afraid of being. In the enormous quiet Flutie struggles to be heard.

Upon the cover of this little book is a painting of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha by Fr. John Guiliani - a remarkable blending of Catholic Italian saintliness & aboriginal American heritage. It is emblematic of what is between the covers.

I wondered, as I read Flutie whether I was supposed to like this book, this heroine, this mute misery. I often had to re-read sections to make sense of it & sometimes that sense was horrible. Partly because of Flutie's inarticulateness, partly because of her raw-boned neediness, partly because of her hidden voices.

This is a simmering glimpse into the coming-of-age of one very lost girl who is stumbling toward womanhood, tripping over a predatory brother, dodging bereft parents. About a girl who reads of a myth from ancient times & seeing a heroine in that tragedy - she too ceases to speak.

With neighborwoman Ruther as her only rock to which she can occasionally cling, Flutie ebbs & flows between her family's emotions, her experiences of the Oklahoma Plains, its Indian heritage & the rites of passage expected of her.

For Flutie surviving her brother's attentions, the inevitable embrace with drink & drugs & an engagement to a long-time friend who turns into an autocrat, are as vivid as the the sough of the sea that once swept over the land or the voices from its human past.

In time Flutie does make dry land, as it were, & begins the awkward & painful process of deciding what to "do" with her life. She also begins to speak.

Diane Glancy's Flutie is extra-ordinary. It is gripping & repulsive, saddening & redemptive, troubling & evocative, distressing & transforming. Did I like it? No! Flutie will, however, linger in my mind for a long time.

Also by Diane Glancy:
Novels: Pushing the Bear; The Only Piece of Furniture in the House
Short Stories: Monkey Secret; Firesticks; Trigger Dance
Essays: The West Pole; Claiming Breath
Poetry: Boom Town; Lone Dog's Winter Count; Iron Woman; Offering; One Age in a Dream
Drama: War Cries
Anthologies: Braided Lives, An Anthology of Multicultural American Writing; Two Worlds Walking: Writers With Mixed Heritages
(09/26/99)

Rebecca