The following review consists of sentences lifted in full, yet
recombined and out of context, from
In These Girls, Hope Is a
Muscle by Madeleine Blais. The book documents the inspiring
1992–1993 season played by the Lady Hurricanes, a high-school
basketball team in Amherst, Massachusetts. Our intrepid book reviewer
loved it for several reasons. This review documents the struggle
between amazing real-life achievement and the bizarre verbiage of
Madeleine Blais.
Emily is a popular name, especially in Amherst, not just for its
music but also its pedigree. The bus, boisterous in its very bigness,
moved past the red-bricked Dickinson homestead with its top-heavy
trees, tall and thin with a crown of green: We’re Somebody! Who are
you? Jen and Jamila were not the first females in Amherst to be known
simply by their first names. They came from a town that prized tofu,
not toughness. Would they wear heels as a concession to fashion?
The dance, the arc, the swoosh. Other teams would look up,
expecting to be able to make the pass they made at practice a thousand
times in their own gym, only to find Jen Pariseau in the way, all
elbows, arms, incredible leaping skills, and riverboat gambler’s hands.
Coach Moyer folded his arms in front of him. “Ladies, it’s showtime.”
Furnaces were checked, windows caulked, chimneys examined for creosote,
mittens matched. As the Hurricanes hurried to the idling cars driven by
parents who often coordinated pickup with the end of their work day,
the darkness was thick, almost molecular.
“Would Emily Dickinson be a potential Hurricane if she were alive
today?” Men plan escapes, the most benign of which involve golf. If Ron
Moyer has a streak of hubris, it’s his pride in his sense of humor. Or
trailing his mother and her wagon filled with its crocheted hope for
betterment. As time went on, he had developed the domesticated swagger
of a small-town mayor. He saw them throwing themselves on the floor for
loose balls and slamming into each other in an unladylike fashion.
The seasons in New England give a focus to time the way a tent with
bright stripes focuses a garden party. She hesitated for a moment, as
if to get her bearings, and then pushed forward, faster and faster, not
frantic, but almost. Although she was dazzling, she was also doomed.
I was left wanting to throw myself in front of the doors, to refuse
to let the crowd leave. “It doesn’t bother me if there’s a scar,”
said Emily, who looked as if she might actually welcome the badge in
it. Rita Powell owned the innate good cheer that seems to attach to
people who can sing.
Their lives, like the map of Massachusetts in which the center had
been seized to create the Quabbin Reservoir, had been punched in the
middle. The setting was more fetching, but the emptiness was as real as
on an urban street corner. Four minutes and fifteen seconds into the
game, when the score was 11–5, the action stopped completely and
an uproar ensued, underscored by the arrival of someone in a fluffy
pink gorilla suit and a bouquet of balloons. Teenagers who don’t want
to discuss something with their parents are like those guard walls in
Third World countries topped with shards of glass.
Did they have what it takes, these sweet-looking girls reared in
maple-syrup country? Kim had grown up in South Amherst in a small
well-cared-for starter house that ended up a finish house as well.
You’d go see Kiss Me, Kate at the high school under clear
skies at seven-thirty, and three hours later the powder was so thick
that even Volvos, clunky and wistful in their promise of immortality,
littered the perimeters of the country roads. Time was fat like a cow
basking in the sun. “It’s not the headlines, not the fans cheering.
It’s seeing your breath.”
“Holy shit! We’re the fucking champions!” From Jen’s point of view,
the verbal nod, buried in the hot lights and the whir of the cameras,
lost to most people amid the outpouring of congratulations, was like
one of those random chimneys in the woods. And as the two girls
proceeded off the court, the guys stood in the distance still
scratching their heads, with dazed expressions, calling out, with a
final effort to figure out what had just hit them, in muted pleading
voices, an unwitting echo of the reclusive poet in white, “Who are you?
Who are you?” 