|
Meet the Goodnight family, a disarming group of art forgers who have many secrets hidden beneath the surface of their schizophrenic lives. Gwenie, the mother and owner of the art gallery her husband created is fed up --- her only interest is in doing acrostics. Eve, her oldest daughter, is divorced from her gay husband Andrew, who lives with her and keeps his male lover close by; their teenage daughter, Nadine, is a smart, savvy kid who rolls her eyes with each new tidal wave that splashes across the canvas of their lives. And when close brushes with catastrophe arise, Tilda, the youngest Goodnight daughter and lynchpin of the group, goes into "save the family" mode.
Tilda paints murals. She has built a business and reputation by turning walls into canvases upon which she paints "forgeries" of great art. "Matilda Goodnight stepped back from her latest mural and realized that of all the crimes she'd committed in her thirty-four years, painting the floor to ceiling reproduction of van Gogh's sunflowers on Clarissa Donnelly's dining room wall was the one that was going to send her to hell. 'I gave you a nice talent,' [God] was going to say to her on Judgment Day, 'and this is what you did with it.'"
The moment that thought passes through Tilda's mind her cell phone rings and she is immediately drawn into the latest Goodnight debacle. Her niece, Nadine, sold a "Scarlet," and the world as it had been, is never to be the same again. From this point on, Jennifer Crusie's fifth novel goes into an offbeat tale about an eclectic collection of kooky characters who live their lives "faking it."
When Tilda was a little girl, her father, a bad painter but successful gallery owner, recognized her natural talent and taught her how to paint. He then put her to work as "Scarlet," a fictitious young painter who produced only six canvases. No one knew who "Scarlet" was, and the value of her paintings rose in proportion to the mystery surrounding her identity. Now that the last of those paintings has surfaced and has been inadvertently sold, it must be recovered. Tilda sets out to steal it back.
Gwen, the Goodnight matriarch, finesses a dinner invitation from the painting's new owner. When she arrives, she finagles the door so that it will be open for Tilda, who then is able to sneak into the apartment. Fear of being discovered forces Tilda to hide in the woman's closet. Here, she literally "bumps" into Davy, who is also hiding in the closet. He is there to steal back three million dollars from this same woman. They quickly join forces, become lovers, and find themselves elbow to elbow with a hit man, an FBI agent, a cat burglar, a sociopath, and a buffoon.
Jennifer Crusie's farcical portrait of thieves and con artists is written in a breezy style punctuated by a constant barrage of wisecracks threaded throughout with lines from old movies and lyrics from early rock and roll songs. She adds absurd bits of "philosophical observations" and Goodnight truisms, like: handsome men are doughnuts, pretty on the outside but after a few hours sticky and tasteless after one bite; other men are muffins, they can be pretty too, but their major attraction is that they are more interesting and they have an inherent ability to achieve staying power.
These nutty notions seem almost plausible in the context of the silly plot of FAKING IT. Crusie draws her characters well, and we are given a real sense of who they are --- sort of --- warts and all. Readers should be ready to be taken on a Disneyworld-like ride through this latest contribution to the land of humorous fiction.
--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
• Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.
© Copyright 1996-2009, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
Back to top.
|
