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| Tattoo Girl | 
 enlarge | Author: Brooke Stevens
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $1.12
You Save: $12.83 (92%)
New (7) Used (23) Collectible (2) from $1.12
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 1121578
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0312269102
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312269104
ASIN: 0312269102
Publication Date: March 21, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Price sticker on Cover. Cover shows wear. Pages yellowed from age. Shows wear. Orders shipped within 1 business day.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Tattoo girl is an evocative story of perseverance and discovery in the face of insanity and corruption. A young girl is found alone in an Ohio mall long after closing hours, unable to speak, nd covered head to foot in fish-scale tattoos. Her identity presents an enigma. She is adopted and named Emma by Lucy, a former circus fat lady. Warned that Emma maybe in in danger from whoever gave her the mysterious tattoos, Lucy goes in search of Emma's real identity, a quest that leads Lucy to a confrontation with the demons haunting her past.
Tattoo Girl is the story of a woman and her adopted daughter, who ndertake a difficult journey into salvation's dark heart in order to rediscover their identities--identities that were crushed by evil men. By turns surreal , nightmarish, and heartwarming, Tattoo Girl is ultimately an affirmation of the powerful bond between two people overcoming adversity.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Spare Me June 16, 2008
I wanted to like this book. The concept is intriguing but the execution disappoints.
First, the book suffers for want of basic writing conventions. Within the first ten pages, characters are described as being in their "midfifties" (1), late-thirties" (8) and "late twenties" (8). Is editorial competence too much to ask of St. Martins-Griffin?
Second, it is difficult to determine whether the author is uninterested in research or reality. Readers are expected to suspend disbelief far too often, and without reward. From adoption agencies with no red tape to a complete lack of police involvement in a plot that delivers crime after crime, the plot events of this book could never be mistaken for real life.
Third, the novel's compelling characters are given short shrift via death, torture, or both. Much like the horrendous book Geek Love, the characters receiving the most attention are unsympathetic and nightmarish.
The epilogue serves to highlight each of these problems. Poor Harold; like readers, he's left wanting answers for the very human questions that brought him into the story.
Though it is a page turner that takes mere hours to inhale, Brooke Stevens' macabre and over-the-top novel still feels like a waste of time.
A good, strange read. February 27, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I saw this book in the library, so I picked up, thinking it looked interesting. My hunch proved correct. It's about a former circus fat lady, Lucy, who has since lost weight but not the scars from a painful and humiliating existence. She hears about another "freak," a girl with tattoos all over her body who was left at a mall. Determined to save the girl from being an outcast, or displaying a solidarity among "freaks," she demands to adopt the girl, who does not speak, in an improbable scene that testifies to her character. All is not well, however - there is a murderous band of men determined to have the girl, who Lucy names Emma, back at any cost.
Brooke Stevens creates an interesting world; we get to meet Lucy's ex-love, a dwarf, and other colorful circus characters, as well as the sinister organization headquartered in a decrepit West Virginia town. Another reviewer complained of the book not being realistic - that's unfair, it isn't meant to be. Few people dock authors like Christopher Moore or Jonathan Carroll from lack of realism, and that is also not the intention here, obviously.
The book was fairly fast-paced and enjoyable, with a great relationship between Lucy and Emma and compelling backstory of her circus days and the abuse she suffered in her childhood; however when you get on toward the ending you find it to be more strange than satisfying or compelling, and the convenient tying together of the past and present in one character in particular feels contrived.
Still, this is a good book and I recommend it to those who look for their fiction a few shades on the side of "unrealism."
ZERO STARS July 23, 2004
4 out of 14 found this review helpful
I read alot of books and I make it a point to finish them. This is the first book I have not finished since I learned how to read. I stopped more than halfway through (I tried to give it a fair chance).
The story is completely unrealistic. This woman sort of stakes her claim on this young girl she finds covered with tattoos. This would never happen. There is no depth to the story or the characters and I didn't see anything inspiriational or moving in the first half of the novel.
Tattoo Girl came recommended to me by a friend. I went to 6 different bookstores searching for it and none of them had it. I WONDER WHY!?!?! Don't waste your time or money on this one.
 2 thumbs up September 8, 2003
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a truely inspirational novel of courage and compassion.It's a story of a woman with a horrifying past who conquers it by helping a child named Emma.Lucy finds herself soon in the same postion facing the same deliema form her childhood while trying to save Emma froms hers.Both woman and child have an amazing connection which they depend of each others lives.I thought this to be a deeply spiritual book that teaches you can find love in even the darkest situations.I loved it!
an astoundingly philosophical message from a touching story October 22, 2001
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I was reading Nietzsche's "the Antichrist" at this time and read this on a whim. The story is heart-wrenching and touching in all the awful things that happen. It's completely unpredictable and exceptionally well written. To think such a great work of fiction can have such philsophical significance.
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