Review: Slicker by Lucy Jackson

A New York girl finds escape, and much more, in Kansas

By Sarah Beardsley
Published: September 1st, 2010 | 6:00am

When the protagonist of Slicker, 20-year-old cynic-in-training Desirée Christian-Cohen, finds herself staring down a summer filled with parental disappointment, boyfriend disillusionment, and a beloved grandfather in failing health, she does more than shut out the world. She runs away to the first place her finger lands on the battered Rand McNally map decorating her bedroom wall. Honey Creek, Kansas, population 1,623, is her destination, a “place as distant and unfamiliar as the landscape of the moon."

Though a passionate lover of everything on her beloved Upper East Side, Desirée is no cultural snob. She views her Crosland adventure as an exercise in social experimentation. There’s no master plan, no place to stay, and no idea that the signs leading in to town which read “I AM THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIGHT” and “Sin is a Cancer to All People” should clue her in to how a “half-Jew” may be received. Desirée quickly meets Honey Creekers who continually overshare personal information with world views shaped entirely within the confines of the Kansas plains. Desirée’s taken in by the most charming guy in town, Bobby McVicar, who plays guitar, sports a long braid, and is in every good way the opposite of the boring boyfriend she left behind at Yale.

Desirée’s family back in New York is struggling with discovery and acceptance issues of their own. Her mother, Nina, a professor, tries to reconcile that her husband, Patrick, left her for a domestic male diva and intellect named Jordan (aka "Lover Boy" in Nina’s parlance). Nina’s indispensible helper, Porsha, looks after Nina’s father with love and humor, until she quits after a minor misunderstanding; and her brilliant literature student, Kingsley, spends her nights stripping and lap-dancing for rich men so she can finance her graduate studies.

Jackson's richly drawn characters reveal themselves to be capable of so much more than just the stereotypes that come with geography, gender, and age. They all realize that labels (“Jew”, or “gay”, or “married”, or “stripper”) are just like those signposts outside Honey Creek: unsubtle messages that can be looked past with an eye that takes in the big picture.

Jackson is herself a mystery, as this is the second book written under the pseudonym for Marian Thurm. Thrum is a well-regarded literary agent who first used Lucy Jackson (a name inspired by her two cats) as a pseudonym when writing a book based on her own daughter’s private school in POSH. While hiding her own identity, she deftly strips it away in her characters.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Slicker

by Lucy Jackson

St. Martin's Press, August 2010

272 pages