GREETINGS FROM JAMAICA, WISH YOU WERE QUEER
MARI SANGIOVANNI
Bywater Books
$9.99 ebook editions, available now
Rating: 4.25* of five
The Publisher Says: Marie Santora comes from a volatile Italian family. But when she inherits her grandmother’s estate and everyone turns nice and caring, Marie knows it’s time to hit the road to Los Angeles, but not before one final family vacation.
In Jamaica, Marie meets the woman who could change her life. But will she even talk to Marie after her family tells one too many of Marie’s secrets? Don’t miss this hilarious tale of lesbian love and family togetherness run amok.
Greetings from Jamaica is a runner-up for the first annual Bywater Prize for Fiction.
My Review: What happens when a rudderless, relationshipless, newly rich dyke decides to change her life, leave her hometown, and pursue the unattainable Object of Her Desire, a famous actress?
To put it mildly, hijinks ensue.
Marie hated her rich grandmother, as did anyone and everyone else who ever met the old bat. Unlike all the others in her family, though, Marie was honest in her dislike, and when the old lady kicks, Marie...the one honest person in the old lady's life...inherits.
This is an old-fashioned screwball comedy, a lot like
Bringing Up Baby or
The Awful Truth. It's a fast-paced, rollicking joy of a book to read.
Oh hell. Here I've got an interesting life and an adorable boyfriend (since become an ex, more's the pity), and I've gone and fallen in love with a lesbian.
Well, can you blame me? This particular lesbian, author of the tome named above, has a wicked sense of humor and a snarky eye for characters and a good sense of timing. She's written, in this her first novel, a laugh-out-loud funny slamming-doors sex farce set in an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. I mean, really, go fight those odds! I'd fall in love with *Rush Limbaugh* under those circumstances!
(No I wouldn't, not a chance, but it's a good line so I used it anyway.)
Marie, our heroine, is in a miserable dead-end relationship with the once-gorgeous-to-her Jessica, a cold, cheating slime. Then one fine morning, Marie wakes up rich, with a legacy of $21 million - the ENTIRE ESTATE! - from her mean, evil grandmother, whose respect for Marie's honest dislike of her has paid off.
Marie's extended Italian-American family, predictably, goes into hyperdrive debating the use that they will make of (Marie's, and Marie's alone) money. This gets old, so she buggers off to Los Angeles to throw herself at actress Lorn Elaine, hoping to convince the said actress to be in the movie she's written. This fails spectacularly, and Marie slinks off to Jamaica with her entire clan, both to salve her screenwriterly wounds and to announce her decision about the division of the money. That was left to HER, mind.
So who shows up at the selfsame all-inclusive resort? C'mon, guess! Oh, all right...Lorn Elaine! With her mother in tow! It's now that the doors begin slamming, the sex (some pretty sticky stuff there!) begins not happening, and the entire cast runs around at warp speed trying to keep secrets and ending up telling lies.
If you're unsatisfied by the ending of this book, you're a prune-faced old moralizing killjoy. As for the humor quotient...well, the author's email is MariLaughs@cox.net. Go on, say it out loud. I'll wait.
Now, if that didn't make you laugh, don't read this book. Read one on how to get a sense of humor.
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CAMPTOWN LADIES
MARI SANGIOVANNI
Bywater Books
$9.99 ebook editions, available now
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: Just when you thought it was safe to pitch your tent, the Santora family shows up. Lisa's taken over a rundown campground, baby sister Marie's been dumped (again!) by the actress, and the Santoras don't know the meaning of minding their own business. When the whole clan decides to fix things for their girls, it's a hilarious recipe for havoc. Camptown Ladies is the sequel to Greetings From Jamaica, Wish You Were Queer.
Mari SanGiovani lives the crazy Italian family lifestyle and writes about it like no one else.
My Review: Okay, see, it started like this. A few years ago, I was having a discussion with an old, old, old dyke of my acquaintance (I mean, born in the first Truman administration! And not dead yet!) about how gay men don't support lesbian writers and publishers of lesbian-themed books, and fewer straight men do this than straight women support gay smexy-time publishers. (I suspect ZERO straight men read gay smexy-time books, they're too skittish about the whole thing, poor lambs.) (BTW, when exactly did you dirty, dirty ladies start using men together as bubble-machine starter? I am shocked, shocked!)
Back to my story. So after a somewhat spirited exchange, containing the words "do not!" and "you big stupid!" rather more often than is seemly for two people whose combined age reaches well, well into triple digits, a challenge was issued: Each of us would buy from InsightOut (GLBTQ book club) a novel wholly and entirely about the other's preferred romantic partnerings. I bought
Greetings from Jamaica, Wish You Were Queer.
Oh blessèd day. I snorted, howled, giggled, and generally made unseemly noises the entire time I was reading...make that devouring...the book. My then-love interest, the lamented Mr. Man, got so curious he read it too. He laughed, or the relationship would've ended sooner.
I sent the book to another friend, and she howled her way through it. She sherpa'd the sequel, recommending it to me, and keeping me abreast (!) of developments in Mari SanGiovanni's personal life. The fact that I'm finally reviewing the book is due to the fact that I need to get it in the mail to yet another friend who read the first one after several of us pummeled him into reading the first one (he's a straight boy, poor thing, so it took a wee tiny bit of coaxing). Having done so, he's fallen for Marie, Lisa, and Lorn just like the rest of us, and is looking forward to reading more about them.
Little does he know. (Close your eyes, Mark! Spoilers from here on out!)
Mari has made Marie's life easier in this book: She's broken up with Lorn, whose career as a movie star means more to her than her love for Marie, she's got money, and her lunatic out-there Italian family (a lot like several Italian families I know, all up in each other's business and as full of questions and demands as any police interrogator) go to work together. Marie gets to leave Lorn's orbit and lick her wounds, Lisa the older sister who's also a dyke gets to hit on the girls around and about, and so does Vince the youngest child, a straight boy (such a pity, that).
Vince does bring Erica, his girlfriend, into the picture.
Oh well, so much for family harmony. Erica falls in love with Marie, Marie goes back to Lorn, Erica leaves for Italy, and there's a romantic ending that made me mist over. Not before, however, I'd snorted and guffawed a lot. There's the clamdigging scene, with Lisa at her inappropriate best/worst. Think I hurt myself laughing, retching, laughing, and shuddering.
So anyway, off this book goes to its new daddy. I hope he hides it from his wife, there is a goodly amount of lesbian sex of the detailed sort in it. I skimmed. Fast. Now if I can just read this address...I find it improbable that he lives in "Olympus Mons, JI" since we haven't colonized Mars yet. I must've written the address down while still laughing about the clamdigging scene.
