Strings Attached

There are not one but two love stories in Strings Attached: the first, between a feckless alcoholic father and his Tom Collins-drinking daughter Charlee; and the second, decades later, between the now grown-up daughter and her glum, also alcoholic lover, a man of few words and fewer apparent charms. Perspicacious readers will notice a few parallels between these not-so-storybook romances, but if forced to choose between them, the first might win out. Jokey, unflappable, ascot-wearing Gerald is a larger-than-life character who drags Charlee along to dive bars all over New England and Montreal. He thinks nothing of playing hooky with his daughter, plans one Scotch ahead into the future, and doesn't even raise an eyebrow when Charlee shows up wearing a floor-length velvet evening gown. Reared on a diet of peanuts, Cokes, and bar hors d'oeuvres, Charlee soon enough switches to real drinks while her father's friends paw her in the gloom.

As dark as this childhood might be, her father at least has his own brand of devil-may-care charm. "You're a lucky girl that you're learning how to be with people, and how to have some fun," he tells her, and for a moment, at least, one sees how this might make a certain kind of drunk's sense. In contrast, Charlee's joy-free relationship with her lover Peter sometimes reads like a marathon session of emotional processing. "All you can do," he tells her, "is mouth the word no. It exhausts me." Quite. Add in jarring jumps backward and forward in time as well as unpredictable shifts between first and third person, and Gay Walley's first novel can feel as disjointed and unsettling as Charlee's roller-coaster emotions. Nonetheless, there are passages here that ring poignant and true, as when she first tries to go sober: "And how was she supposed to tell time without drinks?" One feels guilty wishing Charlee back in the clutches of her dear old dad, but Strings Attached somehow feels most lucid when it's under the influence. --Chloe Byrne