The Class Menagerie (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 4)
by Jill Churchill
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jill ChurchillEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-02-01
ISBN: 0380773805
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Avon
Book Reviews of The Class Menagerie (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 4)
Book Review: Padded Cells For Hormone Hell. Don't Go There ... Unarmored.
Summary: 5 Stars
# 4 in the Jane Jeffry series, THE CLASS MENAGERIE, takes on a classic life event, the class reunion. I can't think of an author or character more suited to gently expose the nightmarish psychological essence, the foibles and fun of high school friends re-uniting after decades of battles with the War of Time. Why is this potentially such a horrifying event, requiring more courage (and providing more raw pain) than childbirth itself?
If youth is lost, what has replaced the waste. If hope has diminished, what has replaced the naivete. If humans are vulnerable during the years of the hormones, they're quintessentially vulnerable during an aged return to the wounded memories. Is there another event more humbling that meeting friends not seen since they lost all their pheromones?
Why do so few of us (if any) attend such a reunion with a warm interest in discovering beauty buried in old friends. Why do so many of us focus on faking stuff to strut in one-upmanship?
Jane came to this reunion in a unique position, since this was Shelley's reunion, not Jane's and since Jane, being a family-traveling-military-brat, would not have a true reunion of her own to attend. What an opportunity to develop rich characters, exposing their "table manners" by the way they respond to Jane's position in the group. I was warmed by the situations in which Jane's easy compassion was expressed through listening skills as she singled out each woman in the group, with no malice in her intentions. Even the normal suspicions during a murder investigation were somehow subdued by Jane's honesty in wanting to know the "good sides" in these women, possibly more than dark sides which might have led them to do harm.
Since I can think of few dreads more dreadful than class reunions, I enjoyed immensely being part of one in a position once removed from Jane, yet accompanied by her wit and wisdom in observation of human folly (with her appealing, natural caring often overcoming the wit this time).
I enjoyed the easy in of chapter 1 opening in the middle of an intriguing conversation between Jane and Shelley, in which Shelley was cajoling Jane into the web of this emotionally chaotic situation. Much to the reader's surprise, Shelley the teen had an opposite personality to Shelley the woman, wife, mother, neighbor, adult friend. Painfully, pitifully SHY? Shelley? Too many of us know how easy it can be to fall back to what we were "then" no matter what we've become now. BIG ugh.
Of course this surges both sympathy and curiosity in the reader.
Churchill used an ingenious ploy of working the event through a small group of women who called themselves the Ewe Lambs, who met a couple days ahead for event prep and fund raising. In this way each character could be focused in the semi "closed room" of the ambiance of a Bed & Breakfast Inn (in which one of the owners was a chef par excellence and worked a few meal concoctions in front of Jane and her drooling reader).
I hate to admit that I identified with one of the characters with whom I would NOT want to identify, but only during the first description of her (she wasn't the murderer). As the characters grew in clarity I couldn't identify with any of them, though parts of all of them fit. This didn't prevent me from enjoying the story through spunky Jane's eyes, though, as usual.
Aging, failure, death (suicide/murder), needs for approval and compassion rather than rejection and pity. A class reunion would seem to be the WORST situation in which to deal in any successful way with these life passages. Yet, might a slight chance exist that this could be the best situation in which to get unstuck, heal, and grow? Is that why some of us succumb to attend these frightening (phoney) landmarks of time and culture? (I enjoyed Jeff's comments on to attend or not.)
Is the situation like a gauntlet? If one could pass through every horrifying hour of a class reunion and never once feel little or less than... Well, if one could do that, then would one have arrived at a place called actualization?
I was once honored to share a short visit in the home of a woman in her 20's (when I was holding that age as well, but with caution). This woman, I quickly discovered, was able to point out her insecurities for scrutiny, then laugh gleefuly, warmly at herself as she owned those liabilities... which were transformed into assets by that open, loving laughter, tinged only slightly with healing shame.
That might have been the most freeing moment of my life. I realized that we all have insecurities; I wasn't the only lost, sensitive soul. Others, I began to see, were naturally bent on hiding, while I had always had to fight internal pushes to face the truth, face fear, and find simple, hopefully painless ways out of hormonal shrouds.
Prior to that visit I had known too many peers, myself reluctantly included, who hid insecurities like leapers wrapping themselves in rags and hiding in shadows.
Okay, folks, "now" has arrived. Here I am. Unadorned, unadulterated. Take it or leave it. I'm aging. I'm grey. I fart and burp. Whatever.
Whoever can say a toilet lid never hit them in the behind, feel free to take the first step off this page.
Whoever can look in the mirror and see absolute and eternal beauty is one who is wrinkled, flabby, and grey, but the easy smile and sparkle in the eye carries the day ... and age fades away.
As anyone would know who has read even one of Churchill's Jane Jeffry novels, Jill's a perfect author to write about a high school class reunion, get the nuance right, and elevate the play into rambling redemption.
Don't be put off by this one due to its subject matter (as I was). It'll heal the wounds; it won't make more.
It's always a joy to read a novel that says something within the guise of a fast, entertaining read.
And, in this 4th novel, it seemed to me that the culprit was set up to be a perfect Sherlock Holmes type pick. There was no other viable choice for villain. Given every detail not only in the plot, but about Jill Churchill and Jane Jeffry, who they are, what they value and believe in, this murderer is the antithesis to the Nth Degree of the essence of what Jane is, and subtly exposes the revulsion of everything Jane finds disgusting and false. Well, now that I think about it, Thelma does a better job of that (of course she's not the murderer, and appears in this one only in the shadows of Jane's mind).
Sometimes authors rise to a destiny of being cultural healers. Judicious insertions of ridiculous humor work well, sometimes sarcastic, always sensitive at the core.
Even so, I avoid reunions like the plague. Why else would I live on a mesa in the middle of nowhere with an unlisted telephone. I didn't need Stephen King to show me why I don't need a (padded) cell, though I do admire his work ... and what would HE be like at a class reunion? I might go to that one, just to see the crowds swirl around him, with flickers of caution.
But, yeah, going to someone else's class reunion. That would be the thing to do. Maybe.
Come to think of it, though Jill Churchill is a great author to work this theme (through Jane Jeffry), any of the authors I've reviewed could put an interesting slant on it.
Speaking of reviews, one of my Amazon Friends, L.E. Cantrell, calls mine "reveries." I was honored by that remark. Thank you, Larry. Will this one do?
On this special Mother's Day, thank you, Mom, for my life, and for your warmth and belief in me ...
But especially for the fat,juicy coconut donuts and Chop Suey Rolls (from which Bear Claws were named and were an incomplete copy of Mom's original sweet roll which has 4 additional, secret ingredients never discovered) which slid steaming onto the shelves of your professional bakery...
And for coming up with the idea and purpose of The SLOPPY JOE sandwich in our Malt Shop in the 50's, so Annie Rocchio could perfect those first drooling, red drippers, and I could name them after Uncle Joe, who wasn't sloppy, the sandwich was/is.
Coming soon as an Amazon Short from me, COAL & COCA COLA, the "rest of the story" about Marge (Rocchio) Hudnall's (my Mom's) bakery connection to the Sloppy Joe sandwich, which proves where that sandwich originated.
We both know you can see me now, Mom. I see you in the blue birds flying by my windows, up high, on a mesa in Colorado. Salute!
A Mantra I designed for myself: "Be where I am and see the significance."
There was a reason for me to post this particular review on this Mother's Day; that reason involves the ultimate mystery of life. Margie was a great Poker Player. She was lucky at cards, and studied each hand she dealt or drew.
Living in the clouds of the mind, which we each step through daily to do what we do,
Linda G. Shelnutt
Summary of The Class Menagerie (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 4)
Despite a full schedule, frazzled suburban single mom Jane Jeffrey has agreed to help out during a two-day gathering of her friend Shelley's former high school girls' club. So while the reunited ladies are dishing dirt, Jane is sweeping it up - and inadvertantly becomes privy to all sorts of interesting gossip and long smoldering resentments. But then a corpse turns up among the one-time student body. And unless Jane gets to the bottom of a nasty senior-year scandal, more alumnae will die at the hands of a calculating classmate who's majoring in murder.Women's Fiction Books
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