A review by jenikki
The Tumbling Turner Sisters: A Book Club Recommendation! by Juliette Fay

3.0

This is the story of a group of four sisters whose mother takes them on the road in a vaudeville tumbling act in the wake of an accident that renders their family almost penniless. Set post-WWI, the best part of this book is showing how a group of women navigate their way through the often gruelling and cruel world of vaudeville, making friends they'll only see for a show or two before moving on. What I felt was a little disingenuous about the book is that I just didn't buy how "kind" it all was. In the afterword Fay explains that she used real names of real people and real places throughout, so I feel like she was trying to be very careful. In reality the women would have been in danger of being robbed and assaulted constantly, with managers and theatre owners taking advantage of them, rather than the kindly agent and kindly theatre owners (named after real people) who always seem to live up to their word. I enjoyed the story, even if it dragged a bit in the middle, but I didn't love the way the chapters were told by Winnie and Gert — mostly because their voices sounded almost exactly the same and I kept getting confused about whose world I was in. What this book DID do was make me want to read a proper book on vaudeville. Maybe I'll finally pull that Charlie Chaplin memoir off my shelf.