Cracking America

by Barbara Toner

Honey Hawksworth is a country singer. Accompanying herself on guitar, she sings of love and loss with all the authentic yearning of a native of Nashville, although, for the time being, she lives at Cockfosters, at the end of the Piccadilly line. Her best friend, Stella Maria, has warned for ages that one day Honey is going to wake up and find that life has passed her by. Even if she is only twenty-one. But Honey dreams on - not just of cracking America but also of finding a man who is decent and true. Cracking America is a journey into dangerous territory - the no-man's land between fantasy and reality; between life as it should be and life as it is.

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 9, 2002

About the author

Barbara Toner is an acclaimed author and columnist who has written extensively about the lot of women in all its manifestations and with all its glorious intricacies, both in fiction and non fiction. Her first two books, Double Shift, and The Facts of Rape were written at a time when there was demonstrably little fair play for women in the work force, the law courts or society in general.



With the arrival of her third daughter, Barbara chose to attack the iniquities in a lighter tone via a long-running column in Woman magazine. Tales from Tessa Wood, stories from a fictional marriage, charted the frustrations of a receptionist with a boring working life and an even less interesting marriage. It spawned two Tessa Wood novels, Married Secrets and The Infernal Triangle which led to contracts for Brain Street (tensions and upward mobility in South London) and The Need To Be Famous (a family‘s unseemly quest for the limelight).



Barbara wrote three further novels All You Need to Know (beautiful girl gets her looks into perspective), An Organised Woman (sisters struggle for supremacy) and Cracking America (fate versus circumstance in Nashville) while writing a column on home life for YOU magazine in the Mail on Sunday. That column inspired A Mothers Guide To Life (updated and renamed Because I Love You in 2012) and A Mother’s Guide to Husbands, each of which ignored the universal truth that advice should only be offered if sought.



After a stint as a columnist for the Guardian, Barbara began to divide her time between London and a house on the far south coast of NSW. She has since written What To Do About Everything, a modern household manual, Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband, (scandal and empowerment in rural NSW in 1919) and Four Respectable Ladies Seek The Meaning Of Wife. This will be published on April 2nd, 2019



Barbara is married, has three daughters, five grandchildren and continues to live between homes in the UK and Australia.

Reviews

[Anne Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really enjoy this book although I pursued it to the end and was glad I did as that gave me the most of the enjoyment I had while reading it. The characters were annoying and hard to like. The plot in the present day was repetitive and seemed to move very slowly as it traversed back and forth from Honey's past while tediously inching towards revealing what really happened and who was involved when a brick was thrown from a roof, striking dead a young singer and banjo player on the footpath below. Honey was so shallow and self absorbed if I could have reached into the pages and slapped her I would have. Maybe that was the point? But I read for pleasure and getting to know Honey and her bunch of hangers-offerers gave me little.

[Sophia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nearly gave up on this book half way through - it's at least 100 pages too long.

'Cracking America' tells the story of an English Country & Western singer (Honey), her best friend (Stella Marie) and a filmmaker (Tom) and the trio's attempts at breaking into the US Country scene in Nashville. Not long after they arrive, a banjo player working with them dies in mysterious circumstances, Honey and Stella Marie are accused of murder and then taken to the house of a counselor, who attempts to get the girls to open up, reveal what happened and work on their defense for their upcoming court case.
The majority of the novel is made up of Honey's recollections of her life from childhood to the present day whilst experiencing extreme frustration of being under virtual house arrest - her upbringing, relationship with her best friend and family members and her love life. It's boring, repetitive and made me want to give up on several occasions.

The story doesn't really move on until the final chapters when we discover the truth behind the banjo player's death, and what will happen to Honey's musical career. Given the length of the book, by the end I was no clearer to understanding the relationship between some of the characters and their motivations, especially as the very ending makes you wonder how serious any of them were about 'Cracking America' in the first place.

It's part murder mystery, part emotional drama, and for all you learn about the Country & Western scene beyond a couple of Stereotyped music industry insiders, this book could have been set in any music scene in any American city. Not recommended.