Billie Letts
Grand Central Publishing
Release date: June 19, 2008
List price: $24.99 (368p)
ISBN: 978-0446529013
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Review - "Made in the U.S.A."
Reviewer: Cori Vella
Rating:
Billie Letts' latest, Made in the U.S.A. is . . . well, I'm honestly not quite sure what it is. I suppose the best way to put it was by the marketing department at Grand Central Publishing on the back of the book: "Lutie McFee's history has taught her to avoid attachments...to people, to places, and to almost everything." Now, reworded, "This book gave me no reason to form attachments...to people, to places, and to almost everything," it perfectly describes the bumbling mess that is Made in the U.S.A.
The book opens with 15-year-old Lutie McFee in a Wal-Mart dressing room in South Dakota. She shoplifts a sweater, a tube of lipstick. We also meet her father's ex-girlfriend, Floy, who is taking care of Lutie and her little brother, Fate (Letts makes a big deal about how his name was supposed to have been Fale, but they spelled it wrong on the birth certificate. It gets old — one time was enough).
It is while in Wal-Mart that fat, old Floy has a heart attack and dies. Yes, she dies at the checkout counter at Wal-Mart. I wonder if Wal-Mart pays Letts to endorse it in all her books? (Novalee Nation in Where the Heart Is, anyone?) Fate and Lutie's mother is dead, and now, with Floy gone, they fear they will have to go into foster care.
So, with what little money they have, they steal Floy's car and drive to Las Vegas to find their father. When they arrive, they learn he's in jail. They are royally screwed. Lutie poses nude to get her hands on false identification so she can get a job, and that is the first of a long line of really dumb choices. She is raped at one of her piss-poor jobs. She acts in a porn video. She also becomes hooked on cocaine. She selfishly spends her money on piercings, tattoos, and drugs, while poor Fate is stuck wandering the streets and spending his days in the library.
What a great big sister.
Lutie gets her comeuppance, though, when she is viciously attacked. A kind stranger takes Lutie and Fate to stay with his family in Oklahoma, where they — no joke — join the circus.
Still with me?
Made in the U.S.A. is incoherent and all over the place, with an obnoxious protagonist that behaves so idiotically that it makes me wonder if Lutie sold her brain on the black market to pay for her drugs. Is this really how USA is supposed to make 'em? I guess they make them differently in South Dakota than they do in my neck of the woods.
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