McCoy, Maureen. Walking After Midnight. Poseidon Press, 1985.
Reason read: Elvis was born in January. Read in his honor.
Lottie Jay is supposed to be this tough, sarcastic, wannabe country songwriter. Obsessed with Elvis Presley, Time magazine, and painting her nails, Lottie leaves her husband, goes on an alcoholic bender, crashes her 57 Chevy, and survives a stint in rehab. The premise is good. Sounds exciting. I like tough as nails women as protagonists. The only problem there was nothing else to endear me to Lottie. She leaves her farmer husband after he ridicules her songwriting abilities but not before she tapes her diaphragm to the bathroom mirror as some kind of perverse voodoo warning. Weird.
the plot mostly centers on Lottie’s bad choices in men. While she is not technically divorced from her alcoholic husband, Owen won Lottie over by taking her to see an Elvis impersonator concert, but Georgie won her over by looking like Elvis. Everyone is deeply flawed so you don’t know who to root for.
I did, however, love the character of tough-as-nails wheelchair bound Matilda. “Matt” was the best character in the book. McCoy paints her as a pathetic, fat and unhealthy lesbian, but I thought she was the most believable character in the whole book.
Confessional: there were sentences that I simply did not understand. For example, “I ran out the door just as a pack of redheaded woodpeckers tumbled from the sky and spun, doing mad things all over the yard (p 85), or “They had to envy Owen and wish they would look as fun, but turning the art of Cedar Rapids into oatmeal perfume was serious business” (p 98). What? But then there the sentences that were utterly visceral that I adored, “The hyena laughing broke into sobs” (p 25), and “The train formed a big loop of experience” (p 223). I don’t know what that last line means either, but I loved it.
Author fact: Walking After Midnight was McCoy’s first novel. It is the only one I am reading for the Challenge.
Book trivia: Walking After Midnight is a super short book. It can be read in a single day if you can stand putting up with Lottie for that long. I took her in small doses.
Playlist: Marty Robbins’s “El Paso”, Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight”, Glen Campbell, Mick Jagger, Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man”, Judy Garland, Ernest Tubbs, the Rolling Stones, Loretta Lynn, Carole King’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”, Kitty Wells, Hank Williams, the Osmonds, the Beatles, the Doors, Johnny Cash, Kenny Rogers, Chuck Berry, Conway Twitty, and a whole bunch of Elvis: “RockaHula”, “Girls, Girls, Girls”, “Love Me Tender”, “Return to Sender”, “C. C. Rider”, “I Was the One Who Taught Her to Kiss”, “Don’t Be Cruel”, “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You”, “Blue Suede Shoes”, “Heartbreak Hotel”, and “Hound Dog”.
Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about Walking After Midnight.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Elvis On My Mind” (p 79).
~*LunaSea*~ 