If we lined up all the books you read before you were seventeen, would you have the stomach to read any of them again? Would they even feel like the same books?

I’m trying to imagine the fascination in which I would hold a book like Where the Heart Is, had I read it back in my weepy-teen days. Let me just confess that I was especially drawn to married-too-young stories back then. I remember, in particular, a novel where the girl turned up pregnant and, after her hasty wedding, moved into a trailer. She knew how to make only one kind of dinner, Tuna Fish Wiggle.

My young self regarded babies and housekeeping, even in a trailer, as adulthood and freedom.

Let me just pause a minute, until you can stop laughing.

OK, are you done now?

This brings us to today, when I pick up Billie Letts’ book about a pregnant 17-year-old girl, Novalee Nation. She’s bound for California with her baby-daddy, Willy Jack, in a car with a rusted-out floorboard big enough to swallow her shoes. Willy Jack’s car serves as a metaphor for his life. But when he needs to, he can put on a “kicked-puppy look.”

Weepy-teen me might have wanted to try on Novalee’s life.

Hardened-adult me wonders what Novalee sees in Willy Jack. Sweetheart, you are headed for a train wreck.

As soon as the author introduces Novalee’s mother, her choice of baby-daddy makes sense.

Anyway, Where the Heart Is turned into a movie long ago, so I’m not giving away too much when I say that Willy Jack abandons Novalee at an Oklahoma Wal-Mart.

What will the poor girl do?

The book’s strength lies in its portrayal of people rooted to the heartland, helping each other cope with the inevitable setbacks.

Its weakness is a loss of dramatic tension about halfway through, when it devolves into a collection of mini-dramas, none of them leading to any particular climax.

Maybe the moviemakers fixed this.

I’ll know soon, because movie night is on my agenda.

 

 

Photo credits:

wide aisle w/ cart:  oswaldo via Visual Hunt / CC BY

pregnant belly:  JohnD_22 via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-SA

aisle specials: Walmart Corporate via VisualHunt / CC BY

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