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Overview
The exquisitely artful fiction debut of Vanity Fair columnist Elissa Schappell is a novel told in ten stories that resonate with the most profound experiences in the life of a young woman -- friendship and rivalry, the love for a man, the birth of a child, and the death of a father.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061882166 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 10/13/2009 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 473 KB |
About the Author
Elissa Schappell writes the "Hot Type" cohmm for Vanity Fair and is a founding editor of the new literary magazine Tin House. She received her MFA from the Creative Writing Program at New York University. She has been a senior editor at The Paris Review and has contributed to numerous magazines, including GQ, Vogue, Bomb, Bookforum, and Spin. She lives in Brooklyn.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Eau-De-Vie
"Pouilly-Fumé, Chardonnay, Pouilly-Fuissé, Sancerre." I chant my mantra in the backseat of our white rental car, Josephine, as we speed through the Loire Valley countryside, past chateaus and vineyards and endless rows of grapevines.
It's not fair that all my friends get to be normal and go to the beach, and I have to go to France and be a total Albino. I barely ever see the sun because my parents are constantly dragging me and Dee through every museum, church, and restaurant in France. We spent two whole days in the Louvre!
On the road I lean as much of my body out the window as I can without attracting my mother's attention. At least today we'll be outside, not during peak tanning hours, but God, I'll take it. I love that feeling of sun soaking into my bones. My dad says the sun turns the grapes' blood into sugar. "You can taste the sun in the grapes," he says, "the way you can taste dirt in a tomato."
Dad is speeding because we're racing to make the tour of some vineyard where they produce a prized Pouilly-Furn.6 (whoop-de-do) and a brandy called Pear William (ditto the whoop-de-do). My mother has been dying to go to this chateau place ever since she "discovered" it in Gourmet magazine. You know, she showed me that picture three times before we left. Each time I saw the same thing: a bunch of pear trees with wine bottles roped to their branches, and inside each bottle a tiny pear was supposedly growing . I tried to make out the pears. I never could, but I guess a magazine wouldn't lie about a thing like that.
My little sister iseating a yellow pear out of a handkerchief.My mother says that's how the French eat them. Their skins are so soft they bruise brown when you touch them and rip open so easily they nearly dissolve in your mouth. Big deal. All I know is Dee is getting the whole backseat sticky and drawing flies. As far as I can tell, anything good draws flies.
Dee eats only fruit, bread and butter, and pommes frites. Oh, sure, she'll say, "Yes please, yes please," when my parents offer her poached salmon in béchamel sauce or foie gras on toast. Dee always says yes-she wouldn't want to disappoint you-but Dee, she won't eat one mouthful, and because she's so cute, so small and blonde and pretty, with her big blue doll-baby eyes, she gets away with murder.
My dad's going to put us into a ditch if he doesn't slow down. It doesn't help that he's got his arm around my mother, who is wearing her Jackie 0 sunglasses and a black and purple silk scarf tied around her long blonde hair like a gypsy. I'm just thankful she's not wearing her toe ring. I can't wear an anklet because "it looks tacky," but she can wear a toe ring. Explain that to me. She's just showing off because she has feet like the statue of Venus de Milo. My dad pointed this out in the Louvre. "Look," he said, dragging us over to inspect the goddess of love's feet. "See, the second toe is slightly longer than the big toe, it's perfection."
He even made Mom take her shoe off in the museum and compare. She acted like she was embarrassed, you know "Oh, Chas, honey, stop stop"-but she did it. For Dad. I bet she's sorry now she didn't pack that toe ring. It's not like she'd need it. France is like Spanish fly to my parents. Ever since we got off the plane they've been pawing each other. More than usual. Which is saying something believe me.
Dad looks mostly normal. His black hair is a little on the long side, but he's dressed in a regular Levi's denim work shirt, jeans, and the sneaks he wears to cut the grass. The only problem is that my father, who has shaved every day of his life, even on weekends, is now growing this horrible little black beard for my mother. With her head scarf and his beard, they look like pirates who've escaped the suburbs, taking me and Dee along as hostages. It doesn't help that my dad is also wearing these black wraparound sunglasses that my mother bought at a gas station. I've never seen my dad in sunglasses. It's creepy. I know he's wearing shades in case we get pulled over for speeding, so the cop can't see his eyes are all bloodshot from drinking wine at lunch. He also reeks of cigarettes because he and Mom smoked Gauloises after lunch. The thing is, my parents don't even smoke!
"We're getting close," Dad says, and leans over to kiss my mother on the mouth. Josephine jerks to the right, and Dad accidentally flips on the windshield wipers for only about the hundredth time. He shouts, "Jesus Christ, I'd like to strangle the guy who engineered this car!"
Dad should have both hands on the wheel, seeing as how he drank almost a whole bottle of red wine at lunch. Mom had just half a glass, it gives her a headache. Red wine and frog's legs, you can't have one without the other, according to MY father, who it seems has read every book about France ever written, so he must know best.
My dad is on a quest to cram culture into us, so we don't have to pick it up late in life likehad to. See, Dad never went to Europe as a kid. It wasn't just that Grandpa was a plumber and so there wasn't lots of money for travel, the family never went anywhere, except to the lake, or hunting...
What People are Saying About This
Use Me is a sharp, beautiful, and off-kilter debut. Elissa Schappell trains her unwavering gaze on life's most complex offerings--sex, death, parenthood--with bravery and (best of all) with high amusement.
What's most startling about Elissa Schappell's brilliant debut is not the impressive elegance of her prose, nor the frightening acuity of her observations, but the exhilarating humor she employs when exposing the shameful secrets that fuel both grief and love.
Elissa Schappell has a wonderful eye and ear, she's smart as hell, and
she's got the nerve to caper on that edge where you can't quite tell the
appalling from the sidesplitting. These astringent family romances broke my
heart so entertainingly that only looking back did I see what dark places
she'd danced me through.
— (David Gates, author of Preston Falls)
These linked stories share an extremely appealing voice--mordant,
passionate, vulnerable, sly--a voice that sounds lived. Elissa Schappell is
very good company.
— (Amy Hempel, author of Tumble Home)
Elissa Schappell's take on grief, desire, death and dying, and her inappropriate fixations on kissing teenage boys and fathers, oh yeah, and nuns...is original and funny, and winning. Sometimes, too, it's painful, as all great literature should be. She's a challenge and a star.
I love this book. Use Me is about girls, boys, moms, dads, friends, enemies, sex, living, dying and everything in between. It is hilarious and touching. I promise you've never read anything quite like it.
She is just so good. All the others can go home. She can stay.
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
A girl's coming of age--whether it is in Margaret Mead's Samoa or Jane Austen's England--has always included an initiation into sexuality and a loss of innocence in exchange for experience. Along with these timeless elements, where and when a woman grows up profoundly influences how she makes the passage. Elissa Schappell's wickedly funny, erotic, and emotionally astute Use Me takes a fresh look at coming of age in the preppy suburbs of Delaware during the final decades of the 20th century.
Questions for Discussion