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摘要
摘要
Diane Leslie's first novel, Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime, chronicled young Fleur Leigh's glamorous misadventures in 1950s Hollywood. "Très charmant indeed," Entertainment Weekly praised this Library Journal and Los Angeles Times Best Book of 1999.Fleur de Leigh in Exile finds fifteen-year-old Fleur in diminished circumstances. She transferred mid-semester to Tucson's Rancho Cambridge West -- the cheapest boarding school in all the United States -- where frail students convalesce in the arid clime and dine on the mess hall's "adobe melt." "Think of yourself as a conquistador," her B-movie actress mother urges, but Fleur's eyes are widened to the evils of prejudice and the burdens of combating it.After a night of dorm-room high jinks, Fleur and friends band together as the "Four-Letter Four." Sentenced to a civic-minded punishment deep in the desert, the "doomed do-gooders" encounter a grave situation far removed from Fleur's upper-class upbringing. Serious issues abound, but in Diane Leslie's world even the most painful moments are tinged with comedy.Diane Leslie's writing is "enchanting, believable, and wickedly funny" (Denver Post). Witty and fresh, Fleur de Leigh in Exile pits Heartland against Hollywood in a tale whose courageous heroine is as endearing in exile as ever before.
评论 (4)
出版社周刊评论
Spunky Fleur de Leigh, star of Leslie's Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime, narrates the next installment of her eventful life as the child of Hollywood has-beens in the early 1960s. Fleur is the often neglected but irrepressible daughter of Charmian, erstwhile star of The Charmian Leigh Radio Mystery Half Hour, and Maurice, a producer single-mindedly determined to relaunch his wife's career. The teenager is sent to boarding school, where she hopes to fulfill the "all-embracing desire that I'd nurtured for most of my 15 years: to live with normal, amicable people from America's heartland." Alas, the word normal doesn't exactly apply at Rancho Cambridge West, a Tucson school attended by 40 oddball students and staff. Mr. Prail, the preternaturally tall headmaster who resembles Abe Lincoln, dreams of-what else?-appearing in the movies as Abe Lincoln. The ineffectual study hall monitor, Mr. St. Cyr, stumbles through his duties in an alcoholic haze, while all the students besides Fleur suffer from health problems that Arizona's arid climate is supposed to cure. Fleur cheers up when she's joined at the school by her glamorous and delinquent best friend Daisy, fresh from a spell at Swiss boarding school and calling herself Twyla Flint. Fleur also makes friends with Melly, the daughter of garment workers from Newark, N.J., and suffers a series of misadventures, including the discovery that the student body is anti-Semitic and the "rescue" of a migrant worker's TB-infected baby, as well as her first amorous encounter. Leslie offers a fresh take on class prejudice and a likable, often funny heroine, though fans of her first book will miss seeing more of Fleur's comically pompous parents. (Apr.) Forecast: This novel could easily be sold as a YA crossover, with Fleur a spirited heroine for teen readers. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
Hollywood brat goes to boarding school, in a sequel to Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime (1999). Arizona's salubrious climate is one point in favor of going to school at Rancho Cambridge West. The place is cheap enough, 15-year-old Fleur de Leigh knows, but then her wildly pretentious and famously untalented parents, Charmian and Maurice, can't afford anything better. And so off she goes, feeling a tad too snazzy in a long purple dress trimmed with shearling (one of her fashionable mother's more eccentric castoffs), carrying a matching ostrich-skin purse. She's almost happy to find out that Rancho Cambridge West is filled with misfits just like her, many suffering from interesting if revolting ailments like leprosy, galloping heebie-jeebies, and unintentional pregnancy. Even the flawlessly chiseled face of 17-year-old Brian, the school sex god, is marred by telltale flakes of psoriasis. Oh, well. Fleur's childhood friend Daisy is there, too, thanks to Charmian, who wangled a two-for-one rate for the girls. Daisy has changed her name to Twyla Flint and swears Fleur to secrecy as she tells the intriguing story of the pot of gold she's to inherit on her 18th birthday--that is, if the nice man at the Swiss Banque lets her at the trust fund. Ever a troublemaker, Twyla tells other scurrilous tales, loosely based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, about Jews controlling the world's money supply. When Melly, the after-hours maker of delicious matzo brei, is ostracized and hurt, Fleur suddenly remembers her Hebraic forebears (not that Maurice and Charmian are exactly observant Jews) and rallies to Melly's defense. Lines are drawn and sides chosen, and Rancho Cambridge West struggles with the ugly issue of anti-Semitism. Will Twyla get her money? Fleur her man? (Happily, the psoriasis hasn't gotten as far as Brian's perfect bottom.) A female Holden Caulfield in a hell-away-from-hell. Sometimes funny, relentlessly arch. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Leslie's second novel featuring Fleur de Leigh picks up a few years after the end of Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime (1999). Charmian and Maurice, 15-year-old Fleur's parents, ship her off to a boarding school in 1950s Tucscon called Rancho Cambridge West (RCW), a haven for sick kids who need an arid climate. Once there, Fleur immediately thinks of how she can get out--the advertised luxurious swimming pool shimmers with slime, dinner has questionable origins, and the headmaster would rather be in Hollywood, using his resemblance to Abe Lincoln as a ticket to cinema success. But there is a silver lining to Fleur's exile: she is reunited with her childhood best friend, Daisy, who has changed her name to Twyla, who is biding her time at RCW until her eighteenth birthday (when the trust fund kicks in). Fleur soon finds that her fellow students aren't as bad as she thought, and that maybe she and Twyla aren't as alike as they once were, despite both having movie-star parents. A fast-moving and enjoyable coming-of-age tale. --Beth Leistensnider
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
Fleur's parents, monstrously insensitive and selfish Hollywood producer Maurice and actress Charmian, who were introduced in Fleur de Leigh's Life of Crime, send their teenage daughter off to Rancho Cambridge West, an inferior boarding school in Arizona. An incompetent headmaster, a horse-loving roommate, an unexpected reunion with an old friend, and eccentric teachers and fellow students enliven Fleur's life, with added complications arising when Fleur and her friends decide to adopt a baby suffering from tuberculosis. Fleur is also introduced to the evils of alcohol and the mysteries of sex. Given the busy plot, what you should have is an eventful year for Fleur and an enjoyable novel for the reader. Unfortunately, the sophomore curse has hit Leslie hard. Everything that made the first book such a delight-its energy, wit, and cast of well-developed and eccentric characters-is lost in this dull and charmless sequel. In addition, the descriptions of the alcoholic, stereotypically gay teacher and the migrant workers-presumably intended to be humorous-are simply offensive. Buy minimally only to meet demand. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/02.]-Nancy Pearl, Washingon Ctr. for the Book, Seattle (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.