Reviews for Fin & Lady

Kirkus
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In her newest, about a young boy raised by his madcap half sister, Schine (The Three Wiessmanns of Westport, 2010, etc.) joins the spate of recent authors attempting to capture the zeitgeist of the 1960s. In 1964, after 11-year-old Fin's mother dies, he leaves the Connecticut farm where he's lived since his father's death to live in Manhattan with his new guardian, his father's daughter from his first marriage. Although she is Fin's only living relative, the last time they were together was six years earlier, when he went with his parents to Capri, where Lady had run away to avoid a socially acceptable marriage. Now 24, Lady is a mix of Auntie Mame and Holly Golightly--beautiful, effervescent and emotionally wounded. Whether carefree or careless, she is luckily extremely rich. She moves Fin into a hip but far from shabby Greenwich Village brownstone and enrolls him in a progressive school without desks or grading. She throws wild parties, drives a convertible, roots for the Mets and dabbles in leftist politics. She also puts Fin in charge of finding her a suitable husband. She has three suitors: Tyler, the fiance she jilted at the altar as a pregnant 18-year-old, has become the still besotted if bitter lawyer in charge of Fin's financial estate; handsome, not-too-bright jock Jack's appeal lies in his preppy shallowness; then there is Fin's choice, Biffi, a Hungarian Jew who survived World War II to become an art dealer of genuine kindness and wit. But the deep-seated sorrow peaking up through Biffi's charm scares Lady off. Loved by all three men, she's unable to love anyone except Fin and their black housekeeper, Mable, a character who defies conventional stereotypes and thus personifies the upheavals in the decade's civil rights movement. Then she returns to Capri and discovers the joy and danger of being in love herself. Schine offers up a bittersweet lemon souffl of family love and romantic passion.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.


Library Journal
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In this madcap novel, Schine (The Three Weissmanns of Westport) paints a fractured picture of the second half of the 1960s in New York's Greenwich Village. Fin, 11 years old and newly orphaned, leaves his rural Connecticut dairy farm home and comes to live with his half-sister, Lady. Only six years older than Fin, Lady is neurotic, capricious, and unstable. She enrolls Fin in a progressive school in which the children study Bob Dylan album notes, play with blocks, and deconstruct the academic hierarchy by first-naming everyone, even teachers. One only realizes by book's end that Fin is telling the story to his own ward. The author interview at book's end is of interest. Anne Twomey brings a thoughtful competence to the narration. -VERDICT This book is recommended to Schine fans and those who enjoy 1960s-set fiction and books told from the viewpoint of young characters. ["A good summer read for those who like their family dramas with more bite than sweetness," read the review of the Sarah Crichton: Farrar hc, LJ 7/13.]-David -Faucheux, Louisiana Audio Information & Reading Svc., Lafayette (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.


Publishers Weekly
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Schine's new novel (after Alice in Bed) is an entertaining, sometimes perplexing exploration of family bonds and bondage. When Fin is orphaned at the age of 11, Lady, his half-sister, takes him in, pulling him away from the dairy farm in rural Connecticut to the Greenwich Village of the mid-1960s. Lady has always been a shining figure to Fin, who was too young to understand the falling-out she had with their father. Now, Fin and Lady form an unconventional family, set against a tumultuous political and social climate. At times the novel has echoes of Auntie Mame; at others, Dawn Powell. The narrator's voice is used so sparingly as to intrude when it is used, and the reader gets ahead of the story in figuring out who this shadowy figure is in the tale. The bond between Fin and Lady is strong, but the story itself breaks little new ground and doesn't reveal anything new about the era or the longings of those experiencing it. Schine writes lively dialogue and excels at sensory detail, especially early on, before the plot becomes predictable, as the novel wavers precariously between satiric comedy-of-manners and something more serious. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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