DOLL PALACESara Lippmann. Dock Street Press, $16 ($4 shipping), paperback (192p) ISBN 9780991065714
Most of
the protagonists in Sara Lippmann’s story collection Doll Palace are hot messes.
Others are just lost. All are
intriguing. Throughout the book, Lippmann
explores different voices—teens, kept women, divorcees, strippers, fathers,
clowns—but most of the characters are women and most of them make us think
about what that means.
Lippmann
shows us protagonists at their worst. Most
show no ounce of the shame they know they should have—as in the cheating,
plastic surgery obsessed Abigail of “The Best of Us,” who is on a yoga retreat
and not playing by the rules. Sometimes
they are self-obsessed, like Frida in the title story who offers advice to her
niece’s babysitter without once listening to what she has to say. Others are humbled by their worst, which is
revealed slowly and through backstory, as in “All This Happiness,” the story of
a clown named Max who is struggling to father a brain damaged infant.
Lippmann
doesn’t seek to redeem these characters as much as show them as fully
human. While the reader doesn’t
necessarily excuse Max of his past deeds, he is so honest and full that we root
for him over the insincere childhood friend who invited him to perform at her
son’s birthday party. As for the
unapologetic characters, in some ways we can admire their unwillingness to
follow the rules set out for them, their unwillingness to be sorry, because the
women in their positions are so often asked to be sorry.
Lippmann
lets the reader understand more than her protagonists. She paints the world through other characters
and plot turns so that we can make our own decisions about character. We root for the Xanax-addicted babysitter in
“Queen of Hearts” over the narrator who first slipped one to her, but we also
agree with the narrator of “Tomorrowland” who fears her “daughter will meet a
nice man.”
These
characters also makes the timid characters more tender. Lippmann has a talent for writing teen
girls. And what is especially pleasing
for me is how virginity is tackled in the book.
Some characters have a lot of sex and some characters are not ready for
sex, both represented in “Everyone Has Your Best Interests at Heart.” Girls who have sex and girls who don’t face
opposite but similar struggles. Each is working out the world of women more
than they are the world of men.
If there
is a weakness to Lippmann’s collection, it is probably when she gets into
worlds that are more imaginative: a stripper who also wears a giant Elmo
costume to cut children’s hair, the target girl for her father’s knife throwing
performances. But even when she doesn’t
quite suspend my disbelief, the situations are interesting enough to keep me
reading. And the book is so rich
otherwise. Lippmann’s worlds are beautifully
rendered, from the menagerie of strollers on a New York side walk to the teddy
bear décor of a boardwalk fudge shop, from the commercial overload of an
American-Girl-Doll-esque café to the Russian bar in Brighton Beach where women
high kick to every 80s favorite. The
stories lead us to perfect endings, often ominous and not quite clear endings
that made me re-read the last page. Even
the re-read was a pleasure. (September 2014)
Purchase
Doll Palace HERE.
Reviewer
bio: Christy Crutchfield’s novel How to Catch a Coyote is
forthcoming from Publishing Genius in 2014. Her work has appeared in Mississippi
Review online, Salt Hill Journal, the Collagist, Newfound,
and others. Visit her at christycrutchfield.com
