Review of Working Parts, by Lucy Jane Bledsoe.
Lori Taylor and her best friend Mickey Rodriguez work in a bike shop. Theyre the best mechanics around. At 28, Lori can talk eloquently about the spirituality of biking, she can take apart anything from toasters to cars and put them back together again, but she cant read, and its a secret shes hidden from everyone. At 26, Mickey has never kissed a girl. When Lori tells Mickey her secret, they challenge each other...Lori will learn to read, and Mickey will find someone to kiss. And in that challenge their lives will be changed profoundly.
Lori, the illiterate, lying, libido-driven, grease stained hustler mechanic enrolls in the Literacy Project at the Library. On her way into her first meeting with her tutor she meets the librarian, Pam, with whom she becomes completely smitten. Flirting with Pam, shes late to her meeting with her Literacy Project tutor, Deirdre Felix, a mid-60s do-gooder with wool slacks, cashmere sweater, and gold earrings. Clearly, this was not going to work for Lori.
She skips the second class because she didnt want to keep sneaking past that hot librarian or have to explain to her where she was going. That weekend, Lori attends an oceanside sex workshop, but leaves that as well when it was her turn to talk about one fear she had of sex. On the beach she meets Whitney, who had also walked out of the class. Whitney is an energetic business woman, a networking, hard-driven graphic artist. Lori, never one to miss a lie, tells her she is opening a bike shop, and a very excited Whitney tells her she should come with her to the next meeting of BONG (Business Owners Networking Group), a group of lesbian businesswomen who will help develop her business plan and get her established.
To cut to the chase, Whitney and Lori become lovers, but it is a relationship based on different needs and several lies...that Lori is opening a bike shop, and that she is literate. Their relationship exposes much of their individual lives, their needs and struggles, and Bledsoe does a remarkable job of developing their characters and getting into their heads and emotions as the relationship takes its course.
Meanwhile, Deirdre Felix emerges with great strengths, weaknesses and empathy and it opens up Lori to a new world of unexpected feelings. Deirdre, going beyond her reading tutor role, invites Lori to the ballet, and reluctantly she goes. At their second ballet, Lori is again mesmerized by the performance and even more confused about her feelings toward Deirdre.
"It struck me then how many different kinds of things can move a person and how being moved is what counts, not what moves you. And how the more deeply you are moved, the harder it is to define what it is that is doing the moving. The dancers moved me. Deirdre Felix moved me deeply. Why? Was I in love with her? I think it was very much bigger than being in love. It was her books, no not just the paper and ink but the room of stories in which she lived, her study, and the dancers she loved, her generosity to me. Not generosity of time, and certainly not of words, but of spirit."
Meanwhile, Mickey falls for 16 year old Sheila who he meets at the ice skating rink, so at least his part of the challenge has been met, even though it is with jail bait. While his role here is important and his tale told, this is Loris story.
In spite of all she has done to fight it, Lori finally has a major breakthrough in her approach to words and reading, and actually goes to a new readers writing class at the library. The students are asked to write about a person who means a lot to them, and to then read their stories out loud. Terrified, but not running away this time, Lori reads her eight sentence misspelled story to the class and so moves them that shes asked to read it again. Bledsoe writes here with seeming simplicity that so perfectly captures the emotion of the scene that I found myself crying, and then smiling through my tears as Lori finishes her story and says
"At the break I drank instant coffee and ate about twelve Lorna Doones, grinning and chatting with the other new readers as if I had known them for years. Of course, I had. They were my dad. They were me."
Working Parts is a beautifully told tale, one in which the characters are all well drawn and grow. Ive read books where the characters are all so lifeless, annoying or stupid that I found myself screaming at the pages "I hope you all die in the next chapter!" but theres none of that here. These are the kind of people you want to know, want to have in your life, burnished stones with rough spots who evolve with depth and raw emotion, grace and anger. Lori learns about the power of personal honesty, Mickey survives his first love, Deirdre becomes the pupil and survives a divorce. The secondary characters also have great impact, as Bledsoe tells you enough about them that you really care, you understand, and they are drawn seamlessly in as well.
Bledsoes prose is lyrical and rich, her scenes and characters buzz with reality. In the end, this is a story about the power of living honestly, of looking for and recognizing strength in ourselves and others, particularly when we dont believe its there. Its about defeating shame which so destructively holds us back from our dreams, and that age-old dilemma of feeling OK about being different.
Lucy Jane Bledsoe has written an eloquent novel that should be on everyones reading list.
Barry Becker, a regular contributor to LETTERS, lives and works in Rehoboth Beach.
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5/30/97 Issue. Copyright 1997 by CAMP Rehoboth, Inc. All rights reserved.