Product Description

I am convinced that at birth the cake is already baked. Nurture is the nuts or frosting, but if you’re a spice cake, you’re a spice cake, and nothing is going to change you into an angel food.

Tall, slender Violet Mathers is growing up in the Great Depression, which could just as well define her state of mind. Abandoned by her mother as a child, mistreated by her father, and teased by her schoolmates (“Hey, Olive Oyl, where’s Popeye?”), the lonely girl finds solace in artistic pursuits. Only when she’s hired by the town’s sole feminist to work the night shift in the local thread factory does Violet come into her name, and bloom. Accepted by her co-workers, the teenager enters the happiest phase of her life, until a terrible accident causes her to retreat once again into her lonely shell.

Realizing that she has only one clear choice, Violet boards a bus heading west to California. But when the bus crashes in North Dakota, it seems that Fate is having another cruel laugh at Violet’s expense. This time though, Violet laughs back. She and her fellow passengers are rescued by two men: Austin Sykes, whom Violet is certain is the blackest man to ever set foot on the North Dakota prairie, and Kjel Hedstrom, who inspires feelings Violet never before has felt. Kjel and Austin are musicians whose sound is like no other, and with pluck, verve, and wit, Violet becomes part of their quest to make a new kind of music together.

Oh My Stars is Lorna Landvik’s most ambitious novel yet, with a cast of characters whose travails and triumphs you’ll long remember. It is a tale of love and hope, bigotry and betrayal, loss and discovery–as Violet, who’s always considered herself a minor character in her own life story, emerges as a heroine you’ll laugh with, cry with, and, most important, cheer for all the way.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #123685 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-28
• Released on: 2006-02-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345468369
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
The author of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons cooks up a novel of hard-won luck and the wonder of reaping blessing from calamity. It's 1937, and shy, homely, 18-year-old Violet Mathers—battered by a mother's desertion, a father's contempt and an accident that cost her her arm—has decided to travel from her Kentucky hometown to the Golden Gate Bridge, from which she plans to jump. But when her bus is totaled in North Dakota, she's put up by a warm local family, whose heartthrob son, Kjel, dreams of musical stardom with his black friend Austin, a guitar virtuoso. Pitying Violet, Kjel ropes her into a journey to retrieve Austin's brother, Dallas, a sullen but musically gifted ex-con. By happy accident, the three men fill in for a no-show band at a carnival, enthralling the first of many crowds. As the Pearltones, they soon inspire a mania of Elvis-like proportions, and Violet blooms in their company and proves a savvy manager. Landvik cuts her light, sweet prose with dashes of wryness and pinches of reality: appalled stares, clenched fists and even a burning cross greet the band as they make their way South, while bad apples threaten it from within. Landvik strings the escapades into a playful and poignant narrative, even as a backdrop of Ku Klux Klan violence and Depression-era hardship keeps the fairy tale in check.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Violet Mathers doesn't know the meaning of the word discouraged, though there have been plenty of times when she has stared hardship in the face and nearly collapsed under its harsh return gaze. Physically and emotionally abandoned by her parents, Violet comes of age during the Depression, learning early on to fend for herself as an accomplished seamstress. When a violent factory accident takes part of one arm, her dreams of becoming a fashion designer die, as Violet wishes she could, too. Physically recovered but emotionally bereft, Violet hops a bus headed for San Francisco, planning to commit suicide once she reaches the Golden Gate Bridge. But when the bus breaks down outside a small North Dakota town, Violet encounters a handsome young musician who changes the course of her life, and vice versa. Violet is an endearing character, one of Landvik's most captivating to date, and she masterfully infuses joy and admiration in this inspirational feel-good trip through one daring young woman's exceptional life. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Praise for Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

“Highly entertaining . . . almost as hard to put down [as] Mary McCarthy’s The Group.”
–The Seattle Times

“A lively story as delectable as a five-pound box of chocolates . . . a thoroughly engaging chronicle of friendship and the substantive place it holds in women’s lives.”
–Anne LeClaire, author of Leaving Eden

“It is impossible not to get caught up in the lives of the book group members. . . . Landvik’s gift lies in bringing these familiar women to life with insight and humor.”
–The Denver Post

“A guilty pleasure . . . This light, snappy read may be [Landvik’s] best yet.”
–Midwest Living magazine

"The Minneapolis author plunges fearlessly into sticky situations and uncomfortable truths in this atmospheric tale of a wounded soul on a journey of self-discovery in 1930s North Dakota."
-Minneapolis Star Tribune


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Another wonderful story by Lorna Landvik
OH MY STARS by Lorna Landvik
May 6, 2005


I've read only a few books by Lorna Landvik so far, but I already look forward to each new book she writes. Her latest, OH MY STARS, was quite different from PATTY JANE'S HOUSE OF CURL and her more recent ANGRY HOUSEWIVES EATING BON BONS, but I think this latest book is one that I'll remember for a long time.

Violet Mathers starts out in life feeling unloved and unwanted. She's too tall, too plain, and then after she loses an arm to a horrific accident in the sewing factory where she works (she is only sixteen years old at the time), she soon feels that her life is not worth living. At the age of 18, she leaves her father (her mother had left them years ago for another man), gets on a bus bound for San Francisco, hoping to be the second person to end their life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

What can only be fate happens during this bus trip. The bus ends up in an accident, and because they are stranded somewhere in North Dakota, she ends up being rescued by a very handsome young man named Kjel, and his good friend Austin, and they bring her home. This is the turning point of her so far miserable life, and her life is now on the upswing.

A good part of this book entails their travels as a musical band they call THE PEARLTONES, and Kjel becomes something of an Elvis-like music idol. The time period is the late 1930's, so rock n' roll has not yet been invented, color lines have not been crossed, and so their musical world is a bit different than what we know today. They encounter racism during their travels, as Austin and his brother Dallas are black, but Kjel doesn't see color, and while Violet was brought up to believe that blacks and whites should be segregated, she learns something new through her friendships with Kjel and Austin.

I really loved this book. I do have to admit that there were times when I felt the book could have been edited differently, but by the end of the book, I had a feeling that this was a story I would not forget easily. I am glad I read it and am looking forward to more by Lorna Landvik. This may have been her best book yet. Violet's early life was depressing, however, and some may not enjoy reading about her early years, but I saw this story as an uplifting type of novel, where even the almost impossibly sad lives can turn around if surrounded by people that care about them.

Violet narrates: "Who'd have ever thought a shunned, husky-voiced, one armed, big-chinned girl with a hive of bees in her head could live a life so full of miracles?"

I think that summed up the book quite nicely.

Lovely Little Period Piece
While not roller in the hair funny like her Patty Jane's House of Curl, or as witty as Angry Housewives Eating Bon-bons, still, ja, sure, Minnesota author Lorna Landvik's newest foray into the foibles of the US NorthLand is a fun and graceful frolick. This time, we're in and out of North Dakota and on a road trip with a band in the 1930's. The travelling band features a pre-Elvis, Preslian precursor Norwegian/American Lutheran Boy Named Kjel (pronounced in the Norwegian way as "Shell" just as their native son Kjierkegaard is pronounce "Chicago" <-accent on the first syllable)and includes 2 black brothers and a 1 armed girl/manager.

Told alternately in the first "old ladies are the ghosts-boo!-of American culture;only a few people actually see us" and third person, the story wends its way from the old Kentucky home to North Dakota through the segregated South and back to a Garrison Keillor-esque North Dakota. Landvik's latest is a fresh brisk breath of North Dakota air. /TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer

Quirky, Pleasing but Lacking....
It's the Depression; Violet Mathers is 18 years old, creatively accomplished, a cacophony of ugliness, the product of an absent mother and a cruel father and the casualty of a factory accident that robs her of her talents and sets her on a suicide mission to the Golden Gate Bridge. As chance (or fate, luck or doom?) would have it, the bus she is traveling on crashes in a small North Dakota town. Here Violet meets the men who will change her life, musicians, Kjel Hedstrom and his 'black as night' friend Austin Skyes. In love with Kjel, repulsed by Austin and eventually annoyed by Dallas (Austin's ex-con brother), Violet joins the threesome as they travel across America on a tuneful, almost Elvis-like adventure of self-discovery and social issues.

The self-discovery is nicely done. It's quite easy to become drawn into Violet's world thanks to Landvik's brillant humor and empathy.

The quartet of characters, though not deep, is fun and pleasing and easy to care about.

Landvik ultimately loses her reality when dealing with the social issues of a distinctly black/white 1930s America. They are never fully addressed or even worse, developed into the sticky situations and considerable quandaries they were. An encounter with the KKK is woefully short and flawed with no ensuing aftermath or logical social ramifications for the times. I sensed as if the author was floating through the period and was apprehensive about taking on racial matters and losing the cloudy, lighthearted, atmoshphere on which much of the novel rests.

While this is a pleasurable read, nonetheless, historically, it lacks a significant punch to give it the real impact it could so easily have had.