Although both of their characters are sharply etched and recognizable, Kate and Charlotte make such strong demands upon the reader's affection that scenes in which only one of them appears seem incomplete. Six-year-old Kate, daughter of a frustrated Olympic swimmer who disappeared before her birth, spends most of her time in the pool or the bathtub, and wants to stay put until she feels like a ""human bean'' again. Charlotte is determined to wait there until her unknown fatherwhose shoes she keeps on her shelf as a kind of sacramentpays the visit her mother is always forecasting. Flax, whose promiscuity extends to her surroundings, has driven Charlotte and her little sister Kate all over the country looking for a place that will not pall this time, though, the children clamor to stay.
Charlotte may censure her mother's bedroom generosity, but she is doubly severe with her own, flagellating her body and emulating the nuns in the convent near her house, one of 18 she's inhabited in her short life.
Flax and whose impulse toward martyrdom is enfeebled by erotic desire. Dann has created a young girl who accepts the unkindness of the mad universe in which she''s whirling and takes it on with a savage glee.Ĭharlotte Flax is like no one you have ever met - and someone you know very well.There is a charm and freshness to this first novel, whose 14-year-old protagonist, Charlotte, speaks of her mother as Mrs. Here’s what Patty Dann had to say about the process of adapting her novel: It was wonderful and a bit overwhelming. The movie came out shortly after in 1990. She''s smitten with the shy young caretaker at the convent at the top of the hill. Mermaids, written by Patty Dann, was published in 1986. Charlotte''s main ambition in life is to become a saint, preferably martyred, though she''s Jewish.
Flax is a woman who wears polka-dot dresses and serves hors d''oeuvres for dinner every night, and Kate is a child who basically wants to be a fish.Īnd then there''s Charlotte, who in Patty Dann''s hands, is transformed into a young woman of infinite whim and variety. Flax into a sleepy 1960''s Massachusetts town. So begins this extraordinary first novel about one wild year in the life of 14-year-old Charlotte Flax, when she and her sister Kate move with Mrs. Flax was happiest when she was leaving a place, but I wanted to stay put long enough to fall down crazy and hear the Word of God.
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