Snowy

Rating:
Summary: A good follow-up
Review: After reading and falling in love with the gang from THE CHEERLEADER, I had to know what happened to them after high school. SNOWY allows just that. I was very happy with the turn of events for my favorite characters. Ruth Doan MacDougall has written another wonderful book for me to love.

SNOWY begins when Henrietta Snow ("Snowy") is in college with her roommate Harriet. From there, MacDougall takes us on a journey through Snowy's boyfriends, new friends, old friends, first job, marriage, children, etc. SNOWY spans 40 years, which I love. Readers will really get a chance to know these characters inside and out.

I am glad to see there is another installment of this series, called HENRIETTA SNOW. I want to know what happens after age 48! Kudos for Ruth Doan MacDougall for writing another wonderful story with these wonderful characters. I can't wait to see what is next.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't compare to The Cheerleader
Review: I first read The Cheerleader as a teenager and it was one of my all-time favorite books, one to be cherished. I wanted the story to go on and on so I was very happy when I found out 7 years after its publication about Snowy, the sequel. I hunted down a copy and read it in one night. After The Cheerleader, I found Snowy to be a let-down. The characters as adults weren't endearing. I couldn't relate to them at all. The life path that Snowy took seemed to totally conflict with the forces that shaped her teen-age years. Snowy develops an illness that seems totally out of character for her. It seemed to pop up out of nowhere. I did like the fact that the author brought some closure to Tom's and Snowy's relationship. I just wish it had happened in a different way.

Rating:
Summary: Snowy was awesome!
Review: I had read the Cheerleader back in the early 80's and was delighted to learn of the sequel and was just able to get a copy yesterday and had to read it all before I could go to bed last night!! It is a wonderful continuation of the characters and thier lives and their interactions together. While it is true that there is not much mention of the politics of the time, I did not really notice that it was missing. I think like lots of adults with careers, kids and other issues, you aren't as wrapped up in politics and such as you were when you were a kid and Snowy had always been more interested in her social circle than the happenings of the world. I found the characters to be believable and entertaining. I am so happy I found the book and I would love to see a third book in the seriers-- what happens next?? Buy this book, you will not be disappointed!!

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful sequel to a wonderful book!
Review: I loved "The Cheerleader" and was thrilled when my daughter introduced me to the sequel. The continuation of the character's lives wasn't necessarily what I expected, but it rang true for me. I look forward to following these characters, if Ruth will be good enough to keep writing their story.

Rating:
Summary: Such Real Details of These Times
Review: I read the Cheerleader and related entirely to the experiences during that time. I had even forgotten some of the problems, worries of growing up in those days. I could hardly wait to get my copy of Snowy to see the rest of the characters' lives. Again , more parallel experiences, well described. MacDougall is a great story teller that makes you relive real experiences. I was glad to read she takes the characters into the next life phase in Henrietta Snow so I can contue life's experience with them

Rating:
Summary: Such Real Details of These Times
Review: I read the Cheerleader and related entirely to the experiences during that time. I had even forgotten some of the problems, worries of growing up in those days. I could hardly wait to get my copy of Snowy to see the rest of the characters' lives. Again , more parallel experiences, well described. MacDougall is a great story teller that makes you relive real experiences. I was glad to read she takes the characters into the next life phase in Henrietta Snow so I can contue life's experience with them

Rating:
Summary: Excellent character arc.
Review: I was impressed by how well MacDougal developed the character of Snowy from age 18 to 48. It's not surprising that Snowy developed agoraphobia. Look how she was as a teenager. She had to control absolutely everything; if something was simply out of her hands, she was miserable. Eventually her need for control and obsession with meeting very high, very strict standards, plus her difficulty dealing with the random factor of other people, became overwhelming.

Even without the psychological problem, the changes in her basic personality are also consistent. As a teen, she wanted to be sophisticated, not realizing that affect has to be sacrificed for sophistication. She wanted to be a poet, not realizing that true poets are not part of the mainstream. She wanted to experience, without realizing that many experiences are negative.

Thirty years bring changes upon her. And despite what other reviewers have said, I don't think gratuitous Kennedy and Vietnam references are vital to illustrate those changes. What's telling is the small ways in which society is affected, like conservative Snowy finding an outlet for her tremendous appetite in Erewhon foods, or Ruhamah and her classmates trampling over the front lawn of the high school, where no one in the Gang would have dared to tread.

Snowy ends up brittle instead of sophisticated, a stalled artist withdrawn from experience. The other characters develop as I might also have expected, with Bev still frivolous and Puddles still practical. Interestingly, I also find it plausible that Puddles would have an affair and Bev would not. Bev, for all her coyness, is not going to let Roger down twice. Puddles, on the other hand, was the one who was truly bold, never trying to manipulate others as Bev did, or hoping dedication would pay off, like Snowy, but simply going ahead and doing what she would.

I am very glad that MacDougal mapped it out this way. Snowy at a Tupperware party slugging down that third Bloody Mary has been done. Snowy taking the literary world by storm would be more interesting, but would be hard to reconcile with The Cheerleader. Also, something that caught me by surprise when I first read it: notice how linear the story is after the Bad Thing happens in 1987. I got more drawn into it than I already was, if that's possible, and suddenly looked up and said, "This is life: this is moving on and healing over. I wish I knew people like this." The last scene would have felt horribly contrived if it hadn't been led up to in as much detail as it was.

In fact, everything in both books leads up to that last sequence. I don't see there being another book. That is it: full circle.

Rating:
Summary: A worthy sequel that gets better with each re-reading.
Review: Like many others here, I adored THE CHEERLEADER. So when I saw SNOWY sitting on the library shelf, I almost went into shock...grabbed it, raced home, and devoured it in a few hours. And yes, my initial feeling was disappointment, because (1) it wasn't THE CHEERLEADER II, (2) it didn't provide the life-changing experience I was breathlessly expecting, and (3) it's a *very* different book. Then my sense of perspective kicked in. I don't love any book as much as I love THE CHEERLEADER, so why would I expect to love this one as much? And, while I love all of Ruth Doan MacDougall's books, none of them rocked my world like THE CHEERLEADER did, nor did I expect them to. I realized that I was holding SNOWY to an awfully high standard.

All that being said, having read it numerous times now, I truly love SNOWY. Sure, it might have been fun if Snowy married Tom, Bev married Roger, and Puddles married Gene, and they all lived next door to one another in Gunthwaite, having coffee klatsches and Tupperware parties (which was my mom's '60's experience, to address a comment from another reader)--but would we have believed it? While THE CHEERLEADER is as much a portrait of the '50s as it is the story of a girl, SNOWY is very much one woman's tale--and I love that woman so much, I would cheerfully hang around if she simply wanted to read her shopping list to me. I too regretted the leaps forward in time, simply because I wanted to share every minute with Snowy--but, through flashbacks and other devices, Ms. MacDougall fleshes out those "missing" years so that we have the complete picture (well, up to a point--I'm hoping for a third book!).

I'm surprised--and sometimes shocked--by what happened to the Gunthwaite High graduates, just as I'm surprised and frequently shocked by my own classmates. It isn't what I imagined nor what I would've picked for them, these characters so real and so dear to me. But it's life.

It's fascinating to see these familiar characters through the eyes of an adult (meaning Snowy, but also, I guess, me, since I first read THE CHEERLEADER when quite young, to my mother's horror)--particularly Julia. At one point Snowy muses something like, "The word for Julia these days would probably be mentor--which didn't exactly sum things up." I just love this. I took the presence of Julia very much for granted in the first book, just as most teens take their friends' parents for granted--and it's simply astonishing for me to realize now what a powerful presence Julia was in Snowy's life, how much it must have meant to have an adult actually *see* her--something her own parents were unable to do. I found the vignettes involving Julia to be particularly moving.

It's not THE CHEERLEADER. Nothing is. But once you get past that, you will find a wonderful book, well worth savoring.

Rating:
Summary: Not Bad For A Sequel
Review: Like other reviewers, I first read "The Cheerleader" shortly after its publication. I think I was in ninth grade. I thoroughly enjoyed that novel, as did my sister, who picked it up and started reading it before I was finished with it, and a dandy fight ensued. As a stickler for authenticity who will immediately notice the zippers in the backs of the dresses in Tudor costume dramas, I love Macdougal's eye for detail. And I believe she clearly captures the angst of being a high school student, no matter what the location or what the era.

So I was very pleasantly surprised to stumble across "Snowy" while wandering through the fiction stacks at the local public library several years ago. Like many fans of "The Cheerleader," I was very curious as to what happened to Snowy, Tom, Bev, Puddles and the rest of The Gang.

"Snowy" is a good read, but you really have to have read "The Cheerleader" to appreciate it best. I loved the passages about Ruhamah's birth, and about Snowy dealing with her dad's terminal cancer. I am guessing that the author drew upon some personal experiences when writing this book. And I am sincerely hoping that the third volume, "Henrietta Snow," is a reality, and will be available soon.

Rating:
Summary: Sniff, please pass the tissues
Review: Loved it, loved it, loved it! I read The Cheerleader when it first came out, back in the 1970s, read it until I knew it off by heart. Then disaster - I lost my copy sometime during the 1980s. When I went on-line, I was delighted to find it available from Amazon.com, and to be informed of the existence of a sequel. And just two weeks ago I found the sequel was back in print, ordered it at once, and it arrived today. I have spent the afternoon on my bed, weeping over it, and loving it. I think the adult Snowy is a pretty fair reflection of the child, although possibly the ending was a little bit contrived. On the other hand, why not? Things sometimes happen like that in real life..... don't they?