Reviews

Rainey Royal by Dylan Landis

readingwithhippos's review against another edition

4.0

Never before have I been so transfixed by such an unlikable character. The titular Rainey Royal is a skilled manipulator, oversexed and under-supervised in early '70s New York. She steals. She bullies. She licks her teeth at her male teachers. She has a lot of emptiness in her life, and she will apparently do anything to try to fill it.

The thing is, I recognized Rainey—she easily could have been one of my tempestuous, attention-seeking sophomores from my first year of teaching. She's one of those girls I would have tried to “get through to,” and I suspect I would have failed just as miserably as Rainey's well-meaning but clumsy chemistry teacher does with her.

Despite her flexible morality and simmering latent anger, Rainey isn't beyond redemption. She's a vibrant artist with a startlingly creative mind. But she's never recovered from her mother leaving, and her father Howard is a hippie musician who is too frank about some topics and not frank enough about others. He fills the house with other musicians, “acolytes” (Rainey's word) who will stroke his massive ego, and largely ignores his daughter. And if he isn't aware that his best friend and roommate Gordy goes into Rainey's room at night, it's because he willfully ignores that too. It's no wonder Rainey searches in desperation for anyone who will truly see her, without judgment or ulterior motive.

The novel, told in loosely connected chapters, spans about ten years of Rainey's tumultuous life. It's not so much the story of a bad girl making good, because it seems that in some ways she will always be a little bit vulnerable, a little bit broken. But it feels honest. It feels like Landis painted this character in front of a live model.

Rainey Royal will be on my mind for quite some time.

With regards to NetGalley and Soho Press for the advance copy. On sale September 9.

More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com

lazygal's review against another edition

2.0

Very nearly a DNF; despite the great things I heard about this, I didn't understand why it was set in the 1970s nor did I find anything likeable about Rainey. There are times when unlikeable main characters still lead to great books, ones that make you think but here? Not so much. If only we'd gotten more about her art, or some reason to live in her world.

ARC provided by publisher.

mhall's review against another edition

3.0

If you like coming-of-age fiction about teenage girls, or things set in bohemian New York City in the 1970s, give this a try! It's got a lovely cover.

wordnerdy's review against another edition

3.0

http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2014/07/2014-book-176.html

3dotsforme's review against another edition

3.0

Teenaged angst meets crappy parenting

bwolfe718's review against another edition

4.0

Read my full review here:
http://readherlikeanopenbook.com/2014/09/09/rainey-royal-troubled-teen-artist-recovers-in-alpha-female-persona/

Dylan Landis’s debut story collection, Normal People Don’t Live Like This (2009), featured a range of memorable characters, one of whom returns as the titular protagonist of her first novel, Rainey Royal.

While she was a minor character in the first book, Rainey gets her moment in the spotlight in this raw and prickly coming of age story set in 1970s Greenwich Village. In these 14 interconnected stories, Rainey is the 14-year-old daughter of legendary jazz musician Howard Royal, whose rundown five-story brownstone serves as something of a commune for him and his musical acolytes and groupies....

lenacamci's review against another edition

1.0

Incroyablement décevant.

Sous couvert de décrire la culture des années 70, une moitié du bouquin décrit des aggressions sexuelles / abus de mineures dont l’ambiguïté morale rend la lecture très pénible. Je suppose que cela dépend de la sensibilité de chacun mais comme il n’a aucune prévention d’aucune sorte, je le note ici.

Rainey est décrite comme une jeune femme très belle, blanche qui est une incroyable artiste, volage et débrouillarde mais aussi use et abuse de son charme pour manipuler les autres. Cela aurait pu être intéressant si ce n’était pas la muse de tellement d’auteurs classiques américains au point où cette description m’ennuie déjà.

Leah est inintéressante. Le livre entier est dédicacé à montrer à quelle point Rainey est fascinante et le point de vue de Leah n’en vient qu’en rajouter une couche. Elle ne décrit que son adoration, et dégrade son quotidien en le comparant à celui de Rainey sauf lorsqu’elle rencontre Zola… Dont on n’entend plus jamais parler.

J’ai beaucoup aimé l’amitié de Tina et Rainey. Je pense que j’aurai préféré que le livre se concentre sur leur amitié si ambigüe au fil des années. C’est un personnage fascinant dont on n’entend pas assez parler.

C’est une histoire avec beaucoup de potentiel, et j’aime beaucoup le style de l’auteure mais le livre en soit est incroyablement décevant.

nectarine_waffle's review against another edition

3.0

If you like coming-of-age fiction about teenage girls, or things set in bohemian New York City in the 1970s, give this a try! It's got a lovely cover.

lep42's review against another edition

5.0

This one deserves a long well considered review when I'm at an actual computer. For now I'll just say that I'm sad to be done with it.

drewsof's review against another edition

5.0

For all the wildness of the story and the characters, there is a beautiful lightness to things in this book. Seeing pieces from one chapter track through several chapters later (Saint Catherine of Bologna, the cape, the teeth-licking trick, the parrot-boyfriend, and so many others) makes the reader feel like they're dropping in on old friends again and again, catching moments with them as we can - because this is a busy city. Rainey grows up (in her own way) over the ten-or-so years that this book spans, but we don't get to see the entire process. Instead, we experience just these stories, which might not even be the most momentous (although many are, or at least tie into momentous occasions) but are the stories that, if the reader were to go out and grab a drink to catch up with Rainey, she might tell us. Think about the stories you might tell, if you saw a friend maybe every six months or so - and then you'll see just how marvelous a novel this really is.

More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/09/29/rainey-royal/