Wheeler, Susan. Record Palace.WHEELER, Susan. Record Palace. Graywolf. 278p. c2005. 1-55597-420-1. $15.00. A Like listening to jazz, like reading poetry, like walking in fog, this novel does not lead the reader in a straight line through the plot. The story begins with Cindy, a California girl who leaves the sunlight, which has been blinding her, to go to school in Chicago. Life in downtown Chicago with its dirty streets, smoky Smoky, river, c.250 mi (400 km) long, rising in Jasper National Park, W Alta., Canada, and flowing generally NE to the Peace River. It receives the Wapiti and Little Smoky rivers. It was explored (1792) by Alexander Mackenzie. bars, and strange characters is like a foreign language to her, but one she aches to learn. It is her ears that lead her to the Record Palace, a record store filled with jazz classics in the formats of the past, even in the novel's setting of the '70s, and its giant proprietor proprietor n. the owner of anything, but particularly the owner of a business operated by that individual. PROPRIETOR. The owner. (q.v.) , Acie. Like Buddha, Acie holds court in his store and in blonde Cindy's life, and it is Acie's son who leads her to trouble. Wheeler is a poet and her novel is a poem of modern life, filled with descriptions and sentence fragments sentence fragment n. A phrase or clause that is punctuated and capitalized as a sentence but does not constitute a complete grammatical sentence. that equal a jazz symphony of the strange world Cindy finds herself in. Those who know Chicago will recognize it in her words: "Outside, a determined sun on snow banks; a passing truck sounding like a brook down the middle of Clark Street, the truck slopping through the slush slush n. 1. Partially melted snow or ice. 2. Soft mud; slop; mire. 3. Nautical Grease or fat discarded from a ship's galley. 4. A greasy compound used as a lubricant for machinery. , turning onto Chicago Avenue In the City of Chicago, Chicago Avenue is a major east-west arterial that runs from 385 east to 5968 west at 800 north in the Chicago street address system.[2] It originates at the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Shore Drive (U.S. . I had a stack of records, no bag, and five hours to kill on the edge of the Gold Coast. For this, God had invented bars." Atmosphere, music, and Chicago fill this novel to the top. Nola Theiss, Sanibel, FL |
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