The Green Lantern & Other Stories,Used

Product Description Stories about contemporary California, especially about California's desert southeast, as the Green Lantern motel. These are bleak but honest stories about how the world's unsafe, about people of all ages who must make choices and hope for changes. From Publishers Weekly Bittersweet images of postWWII California pervade this collection of 11 short stories that are, at their best, quietly poignant and, at their worst, simply precious. Six solid and appealing tales chronicle the upbringing of lonely Delia Harper in rural, agricultural southeastern California's Imperial Valley of the early 1950s, where her father runs the Green Lantern Motel. Delia's unhappy mother leaves them, and her rugged father finds himself in a difficult new role. Curious Delia explores her vast world, from the sugarbeet fields and fauna to the varied guests in the motel's cabins. Smart writes lovingly of the region's natural beauty and evokes a child'seye view of Delia's small discoveries, good and bad. The remaining five stories also touch on themes of parentchild relationships and untraditional family lives, but they are often heavyhanded. In "Posing," a woman at a San Francisco art museum meets a gay man who claims to have been illtreated while posing for an artist whose work is being displayed. She is reminded of her own gay son and hopes for his happiness. "Emily" is the name of little Shelley's favorite doll. Her father's mother makes her bury Emily because she's "ugly" and "from a heathen race." She seems to wish she could likewise dispose of Shelley's mother, who is Jewish. But these stories are contrived and never come to life the way Delia does in her sad, beautiful world of childhood.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review "Solid and appealing tales chronicle the upbringing of lonely Delia Harper in rural, agricultural southeastern California's Imperial Valley. Bittersweet images of postWWII California pervade this collection of eleven short stories that are quietly poignant." Publishers Weekly From the Publisher Ariel Smart's Sensitive Stories Focus on Small Moments, Big IssuesThe stories in Ariel Smart's debut collection, The Green Lantern, say much about difficult relations between parents and children. In many of the stories children have epiphanies that open their eyes to the varied ways in which the world can be something to be wary of. The parents in these stories, too, must come to grips with life as it is rather than as they'd prefer to serve it up. Five of these stories involve the Green Lantern Motor Court in the arid, rural southeast corner of California. A lonely little girl, Delia, lives here with her widowed father, Frank, who, desperate to protect his daughter after the loss of his wife, is a pessimistic, fearful, and tyrannical father. But Frank earns our respect by loving his daughter and caring for her and by working hard in an uncompromising landscape. And Frank's right: it's not a safe world. There are threatening hoboes, cancer cells, and highway traffic. Delia is a wideeyed girl who wants to learn more in spite of her father's fears. She wants companionship, and she misses her mother. Frank misses her, too. The Green Lantern stories show us that Delia has strength, and that her curiosity will help her survive. These are bleak stories, but they are absolutely honest as they present life in the desert as both Delia and her father experience it. Not all these stories take place in California, though all are tied to California in some way. The stories are universal in that they deal with people, the heart, revenge, desperation, desire of many kinds, and dangerous attractions. From the Back Cover In the driest harshest corner of the Golden Sate, along Route 86, sits the Green Lantern Auto Court. There lives Delia, a lonely little girl, with her father, Frank, a pessimistic, phobic, depressed man who nevertheless earns respect