It’s 1954, and May, once a child star molded by an ambitious, domineering mother, now drifts between dimly lit taverns in “Drinkers City,” a fictional, archetypal nightlife world “just past Respectability and Sobriety,” before her journey later takes her to Los Angeles. At Ace’s Bar, where her husband and his brother preside uneasily, she drinks, remembers, and resists collapse. The book alternates between May’s present—bartending shifts, fights with her brutish husband. Ace, stolen tenderness with his brother Alexander—and her past on the vaudeville circuit, where her mother turned her into “Baby May,” a child star in frilly dresses and bonnets who twirled a pink lollipop onstage. Childhood memories flood back: being forced to perform night after night, her mother drilling her with, “You’ve got to work harder, May, it’s all about the act.” Interludes of intimacy, such as hiding beneath the dressing table of Doris, a glamorous young performer May idolizes, while her mother storms through the theater, underline both the danger of discovery and the allure of secret rebellion. Penchant’s use of second-person narration pulls the reader inside May’s consciousness, mimicking both her drunken drifting thoughts and traumatic recollections: “Work, drink, home. You drink to relax the constriction in the chest. Killing yourself slowly. Cannot do it in one short shriek.” The effect is hypnotic, though at times the repetition risks diminishing the novel’s hold on the reader. Still, the plot deepens with each encounter: Ace’s infidelities, Alexander’s secret skirted rebellions, Grace the ex-hoofer offering cynical companionship. May’s yearning—for rescue, for death, for dignity—propels the novel like a sad jazz refrain.
