Iron Shoes: A Novel

by Molly Giles

Book Overview

Set amid the woodsy affluence of Northern California, Iron Shoes is the coming-of-middle-age story of 40-year-old Kay Sorensen. This haunting debut novel is about one woman's painful search for... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684859920
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.6" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Like Golden Honey

This is my first Molly Giles and, based on my experience with "Iron Shoes," not my last. Each chapter of this short, thorough novel reads like a short story. Not a moment is wasted and most are packed with insight into these sad, stuck characters. "Iron Shoes" never suffers from its subject matter and is, in Giles' words, a comedy. In every sense. I appreciated the "study guide" in the back and the author's notes were a welcome treat.

Wow

When I first started reading this book, I thought, oh, my, these people are all a mess! Some of the ridicule and constantly demeaning situations Kay, the main character, tollerates, are just over the top. However, she tugs at your heart because she is obviously a big, messy, loving woman whose big heartedness is taken for granted by all around her. She drinks too much, smokes too much, and does too much, but who wouldn't with a family like this? When she finally begins to take ahold of her life, kicks the awful husband out and stops drinking, you know that she is on the road to discovery. Nothing momentous, but something profound. The author says that this is a comedy about alcoholism and dying, but it is not. There are sharply funny moments, but this is not a funny book.

What I have been waiting for...

Finally I book that I finished in less than 2 days! What made me tear through this book was the wide array of characters. They were so different, yet pulled together by the author like pieces of a puzzle (with Kay as the border holding them all together somehow). You love something about each - and that can be hard to say with a dragonlady like Ida at the wheel! For a relatively short book, many things happened within its pages, with an ending that was all tied up - but let's say not in a "neat little bow"...awesome read!

Just Excellent...

Here we have a 40-ish female whose life seems perfectly nice. Married, nice part-time job, friends and family, lives in a beautiful part of the country, cute little boy, saucy empowering best friend. Look closer: marriage going downhill fast, job about to be eliminated, and her parents!!! Hag-ridden by a truly monstrous, alcoholic, sharp-as-a-razor mother - but the mother is dying, and the mother is deeply loved. She has her faults, but she is your mother. Remote, sarcastic, alcoholic father - but the father is also deeply loved. Who doesn't want the love and approval of Daddy? Born-again, weak, bible thumping brother - but you can't hate him, he came from the same place you did! Uncommunicative, secretive husband, downing health potions, distancing himself more every day - well, some things you may be unable to fix. Sounds awful, but Ms. Giles makes all of this both hilarious and tragic. You will laugh and you will cry. There are tons of stories about women and their midlife crises out there (including the paragon, "Diary of a Mad Housewife"), and as the midlife crisis is a perennial subject, many of the stories have a sameness to them. Worries about growing older, about a failing marriage, thoughts of having an affair to affirm that you are still attractive and desirable, and the looming realization that parents are not going to be here all that much longer. The looming realization that you can, yes, you can grow stronger and take charge of your own life and for once make yourself happy. Facing the death and decline of your parents, no matter how lousy they were - they are dear to you and no matter how old you are, you want their love and approval as much as when you were six years old. Ms. Giles takes all of these elements of the same old story and writes beautifully, making it a joy to read. You have to shake your head at our frazzled heroine, tell her to grow up, to get a grip, at the same time you want to hug her. Hey, it's easy to sneer at this middle aged child-woman, but she spent her whole life with two monsters and she can't just change overnight. But there are definite signs of hope at the end of this book, and you cheer for her. As in many stories of this type, the setting is in an upper middle class town: money is no problem, at least for the parents, which may make the heroine's life easier. She doesn't have to worry about Medicare or Meals on Wheels or home aides - the dying mother is draped in mink and diamonds and there is a loyal, hard working housekeeper pitching in. But death and dying is never easy, especially when there's so much you want to hear, or say, and time is running out. I just loved this book, it is very well done of its type, it has dark humor , bitterness, despair, anguish, wit, and hope. I finished Iron Shoes this morning and put it aside genuinely sorry to see it end.

Iron Shoes

A terrific book about a woman finding herself, freeing herself from pleasing very strong parents. A dead marriage, a fantasy about marrying a man she's never talked with. You find yourself reading rapidly, to learn if she and the new man connect, to see if she can shake her submission as her mother dies and her father ... what goes on between her and her father the night of the wake? A little ambiguous, but she wakes up in her parents house, where she's been alone with her father, naked, a trail of clothes across the floor. You cheer for her, pray for her, hope for her. And also want to shake her, wake her, urge her into independence, to find her strength, there underneath all the while. What about the artist on the bicycle who stops by the library where she works?Read this, you'll like her while you also want to shout at her.