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The Bride of Catastrophe
Heidi Jon Schmidt. Picador: 2004 (paperback). ISBN: 031242342X. 432 pages.
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Those among you who fell willing victim to Heidi Jon Schmidt's delectable short story collection Darling? (like GBL's ardent fan Kira Stevens) will be glad to know that Schmidt is back at the top of her form, working her evil literary magic. Heroine-at-a-loss Beatrice Wolfe grows up in a decidedly dysfunctional family scratching out a living on a small farm in Connecticut - whose main agricultural concern seems to be an unsuccessful ping-pong factory. At college, Beatrice is determined to escape from her family's maniacal whimsy, to become the sort of regular person who does regular sorts of things - although she doesn't quite grasp the concept of regular. Beatrice finds a thrillingly sympathetic listener in her literary tutor Phillipa, an outspoken scholar and lesbian who seems fascinated by Beatrice's unfolding life story. Despite evidence to the contrary and the protests of nearly everyone who knows her, Beatrice decides that she, too, is a lesbian, and thus a part of the revolutionary women's movement that is sweeping the nineteen-seventies. This novel walks a marvelous emotional tightrope between the terrifically funny and the desperately sad, making for a joyful but unsettling reading experience.
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