Dreaming Under a Ton of Lizards - Softcover

First published in 1988 by Silverleaf Press as Three Glasses of Wine Have Been Removed from This Story, this incisive novel follows smart, passionate and alcoholic Olivia Bell as she comes to terms with her lesbian identity, lost loves and a lifelong dependence on booze. In 1980s Oregon, Olivia and her lover, Brooke, are aspiring writers whose stormy relationship is troubled and mediated by their heavy drinking. They painfully separate when ambitious Brooke moves to San Francisco and Olivia, frightened of the city, takes a job as caretaker for a cottage on the coast. Lonely in the new town, Olivia is visited in her dreams by "the woman in the pale green dress"Athe symbolic specter representing her addiction. Trying to find the courage to stop drinking, Olivia revisits her painful past: her intense teenage friendship with the troubled daughter of an alcoholic; her ex-husband, a self-destructive boozer who introduced Olivia to alcohol; her first lesbian lover, whose tolerance of Olivia's inebriation eventually waned. Olivia and Brooke reunite in San Francisco, but a bleak Christmas and one too many sodden nights splits them up for good. Luckily, Olivia finds Kathleen, a recovering alcoholic, who forces her to confront her addiction. Other sober friends who encourage Olivia to dry out come off as preachy and overzealous, but this moralizing is gentle, earnest and forgivable. On the whole, Michener's characters are multifaceted and fresh, and her love scenes, settings and emotional landscapes are studded with down-to-earth details that ring true. The sincere, sensitive exploration of alcoholism and lesbian life merges with a genuine love story that will find grateful readers. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Michener's novel about fighting toward sobriety in a lesbian culture in which bars are social and romantic focal points is brief, intense, and sharply ironic. Through a haze of booze, Olivia recalls her crushes; her alcoholic husband, Malcolm; and a series of girlfriends. Although still relatively young, she has drifted from bottle to bottle, lover to lover, in an attempt to self-medicate her pain and avoid dealing with it head-on. Only when she is alone, whether in a cabin on the Oregon coast or in a tiny San Francisco apartment, does she begin to write seriously and consider the option of a life without Sister Wine and its insidious hold on her. It is through the urging of her lesbian friend Kathleen, herself in recovery from alcohol addiction, that Olivia finally gives birth to a new self and a sober life and finds within herself previously unknown capabilities for pleasure and pain. Whitney Scott