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Book Review: Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys

Out of the EasyTitle: Out of the Easy

Author: Ruta Sepetys

Genre: Historical, LGBT, Young Adult

Publisher: Puffin
Publication Date: March 7 2013
Hardcover/Paperback: 352 Pages

Out of the Easy is set against the vivid backdrop of 1950s New Orleans. Written by New York Times bestselling author Ruth Sepetys, this novel has something for everyone: love, mystery, murder, blackmail and warmth.

Josie Moraine wants out of The Big Easy – she needs more than New Orleans can offer. Known locally as a brothel prostitute’s daughter, she dreams of life at an elite college, far away from here.

But then a mysterious death in the Quarter leaves Josie caught between her ambition and a clandestine underworld. New Orleans is luring Josie deeper in as she searches for the truth, and temptation beckons at every turn.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone

How did I get this book: Review copy from the UK Publisher

Format (e- or p-): Print

Why did I read this book: I’ve been dying to read a Ruta Sepetys novel ever since the incredible success of her first novel. When I got this review copy I felt it was that time.

Warning: Out of the Easy is a historical novel set in New Orleans. In this review I refer to sex workers as “prostitutes” and “whores” just as in the book.

Warning: there are some spoilers in this review.

Review:

Ruta Septety’s Out of the Easy is the author’s sophomore novel after the highly acclaimed Between Shades of Grey. It’s a historical novel, set in the 50s in New Orleans, featuring teenager Josie Moraine whose first person morose, contemplative narrative is the book’s best feature alongside its historical framing.

The story follows Josie’s life in the French Quarter of New Orleans and her attempt to create a new life for herself, hopefully in a college over at the East, where nobody knows who she is. She is the daughter of a prostitute, and has suffered the stigma of prostitution her whole life: the whispers, the snickers, the pitying, the expectation she would turn up just like her mother follows wherever she goes. Even her name – Josie – is a prostitute’s name, her mother choosing it after a madam from her own youth.

Josie’s life is hard – working two jobs just to be able to maintain herself and to save money to go away to college. She is an assistant at a bookstore where she works with fellow booklover, friend and potential love interest Patrick. Patrick’s father Charlie is Josie’s father figure, supportive and friendly and whose declining mental health has been a great source of stress and sadness for Josie.

She is also a cleaner at one of New Orleans’ biggest brothels, the one belonging to Madam Willie, where her mother works. She is there every morning to clean up after the long hours of work and to work as an assistant to Willie. It also doesn’t help that her mother is a terrible person, an absent mother and a thief. To make things worse, a wealthy tourist gets killed after visiting Josie’s bookstore – and the mystery of this death might be linked to her mother’s recent activities.

This is the very basic summary of the book – the starting point for a story that intertwines different strands – all of which contributing to the main push to Josie’s departure from New Orleans.

There is something about Out of the Easy that made me incredibly uneasy – I have been thinking about why it was so since I finished reading it and I think it might have to do with the focus and frame of the story. There is a lot of disconnect between what the book tells me and what the story shows me.

It makes me uneasy that the stigma, prejudice and difficulty of prostitution is examined from the point of view of a character who is not a prostitute.

It makes me uneasy because of how this is framed. Please bear with me as I break down the main conflicting points:

The main character and narrator, is a prostitute’s daughter who works at a brothel as a cleaner. This brothel is one of the biggest ones in Nola and its madam a force to be reckoned with publicly and privately – the madam runs the brothel in a way that makes it a safe, healthy place for her girls, which is awesome. All the prostitutes there are portrayed as well-adjusted and moderately happy. You could also say they are all prostitutes with a heart of gold who have more of less have “adopted” the main character. In fact, the madam is Josie’s surrogate mother, friend, protector and confidant. Her actual mother is an Evil Whore and a Gold Digger. All of these women – apart from her mother – worry about Josie, want to protect her reputation and hope she will not become a prostitute – because they want better for her. Everybody thinks she is too good to be a prostitute and there is a great moment of tension in the novel where the main character is driven to almost become one because she needs money urgently but eventually she doesn’t do it and as such is shown as being morally superior.

So there is this clash between what the novel tells me (prostitution = not a good life; better not live it) and what it shows me (actual prostitutes in the novel = well-adjusted, moderately happy) and this clash could have been interesting as a complex portrayal of prostitution had it not been for the fact that this is only explored in a divided way – this is not a good life for JOSIE but hey, it is a good life for everybody else because what? They are suited to it? They are not as good as Josie? This is all the more obvious if one thinks at how there is a question of purity that is woven in the story. Although Josie is smart and capable of taking care of herself, she is also extremely naïve – but only when the text expected her to be. She barely registers the interest from her two suitors and when she kisses them, there is barely any focus on how she feels about it. But then she does immediately register when older men leer or touch her. She is squeaky clean in her connections to the people she might love but it’s almost as though sex is established as a bad thing and I don’t think this is actually addressed at all. And although I appreciate the fact that Josie as a character might think of sex as bad thing because of how she might connect it to prostitution, I would have wanted to see this actually explored in meaningful ways. This aspect is insidious, subtly presence in the narrative but definitely there.

I am asked to sympathise and understand the plight of someone who is not a prostitute at the same time that it shows me the prostitutes of the novel as living an almost glamorous life. There is social stigma and prejudice but only from the perspective of someone who is not an actual prostitute. I find this really troubling. I had hoped that the social stigma, sexism and patriarchy that is present in Josie’s life to have been examined in a wider context – how does it affect the people that actually live that life?

That said, it is very interesting that the main focus here is how Josie’s life is terrible because of said stigma. BUT even though she repeats that continuously, we see very little of her actual troubles with said stigma. Instead, what we do see is how she has this incredible support system in which the prostitutes, the madam, the madam’s employees, as well as a myriad of friends in the French Quarter and two love interests all love and protect her. All the time. Even the narrative is extremely supportive of Josie: in the end, the madam dies, leaving Josie well-off and therefore solving all of her immediate problems magically.

I also question how the problem of class is explored here – New Orleans is a setting rife for this exploration with the social and economic divides between those in the French Quarter and those Uptown. However, this clash, this difference, is explored only in superficial, stereotypical ways: the rich are only pretending to be happy with the books they don’t read and the pianos they don’t play. It’s all a façade that hides horrible people:

“Let me tell you something ’bout these rich Uptown folk,” said Cokie. “They got everything that money can buy, their bank accounts are fat, but they ain’t happy. They ain’t ever gone be happy. You know why? They soul broke. And money can’t fix that, no sir.”

Meanwhile, the lives of the bohemians, intellectuals, criminals in the French Quarter, despite all the difficulty, are much richer, authentic, better. I have no patience for this simplistic approach.

The book does do a good job at showing another side of prostitution and I appreciated how the prostitutes weren’t tragic figures. I do think there is merit to Josie’s story and experience as the daughter of a prostitute. I just feel it is disingenuous how this story was explored and I am afraid this overshadowed any and all the positives.

Basically, I really don’t know what this book is attempting to do here but I do feel that this story lacks honesty in the development of the story. In some ways it is a book that lacks nuance – you know, a few shades of grey would have done it tons of good.

Notable Quotes/Parts: In spite of my problems with the book I did think there beautifully written turns of phrases:

“Charlie Marlowe never wrote horror, but somehow horror was writing Charlie Marlowe.”

“Sometimes we set off down a road thinkin’ we’re goin’ one place and we end up another. But that’s okay. The important thing is to start.”

Rating: No rate from me with this one!

Reading Next: The Three Loves of Persimmon by Cassandra Golds

Buy the Book:

(click on the links to purchase)

Ebook available for kindle US, kindle UK, nook, sony, sony

17 Comments

  • Rachel Neumeier
    March 14, 2013 at 11:13 am

    Thanks, Ana — you pegged some things that I know would really bother me, so now I know to move this one off the must-have list onto the maybe-someday list.

  • Renae @ Respiring Thoughts
    March 14, 2013 at 11:12 pm

    I haven’t read this, but I do plan on it, and I think it’s really good to be aware of these issues beforehand. I probably wouldn’t have been able to articulate them on my own, but they most definitely would have bothered me.

    And though Sepetys’ debut novel wasn’t about prostitution and didn’t exactly contain the same sort of dual-conflicting messages, I did think Between Shades of Gray had the something of the same lack of honesty you mention here. I’d be interested to read your thoughts on that book as well.

  • Amanda @ Late Nights with Good Books
    March 20, 2013 at 10:24 pm

    I think you make a fascinating argument in your discussion about how the novel is framed. I could totally see how by showing Josie as “different” from the prostitutes who raise her, the novel is ultimately putting the prostitutes down. I can’t imagine that Sepetys intended to convey that sort of message, but I do think it’s important for readers to recognize. The subject matter and time/place of the book don’t pique my interest, although I am currently reading (and loving) Between Shades of Gray. I’ve heard that there are many good aspects in this book as well, so maybe I’ll give it a shot and see what I end up thinking about it.

  • Theresa
    May 12, 2013 at 12:24 pm

    I think you have rung the books neck! Sheesh, sit back, relax, enjoy. It’s a good book. Very good reading.

  • Book Review: Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys
    May 13, 2013 at 8:00 am

    […] child born in bad circumstances, who was so much better than all of her friends. Ana’s review at The Book Smugglers does a very good job analyzing and discussing that issue. Needless to say, I was not impressed with […]

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  • Sara
    July 1, 2014 at 3:56 pm

    I was wondering if anyone could clarify for me what Patrick’s secret was? I feel like I must be missing a lot because it just seems obvious but I have no idea. Thanks!

  • Kassie
    July 21, 2014 at 12:47 am

    I think (and this really is just me thinking) the ‘better life’ everyone wanted Josie to have was one where she didn’t become her mother. Not because she was innately good or different from the “nieces” at Willie’s, but because they saw her as someone who had the potential to not be a liar, thief, and all around bad decision maker. It was never explicitly stated like that (I don’t think, anyway), but that’s what I seemed to pick up from the vibe of the narrative.

  • stephie
    October 13, 2014 at 9:56 pm

    What would you say the climax of this story would be? I can’t figure it out, would it be when she tries to go to collage? or when her mom leaves? what would it be?

  • Book Review: Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys | Respiring Thoughts
    April 23, 2015 at 7:44 pm

    […] child born in bad circumstances, who was so much better than all of her friends. Ana’s review at The Book Smugglers does a very good job analyzing and discussing that issue. Needless to say, I was not impressed with […]

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    October 26, 2016 at 11:52 pm

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  • Caitlin’s Young Adult Recommendations – The Shelf Life
    March 16, 2017 at 1:51 pm

    […] Out of the Easy, by Ruta Sepetys, ISBN# 97801475084430, $9.99, from Speak. […]

  • Hannah
    March 30, 2018 at 6:35 pm

    UMM IVE READ THE BOOK AND I WILL DISAGREE WITH YOU ENTIRELY IT WAS AMAZING AND HEART WARMING I CANT FIND ANY BOOK THAT SHOWS THE SAME PASSION AND EXCELLENCE AS THIS ONE AND I NEVER WILL ITS BEEN TWO WEEKS AND I STILL HAVENT ADJUSTED TO WILLIES DEATH ? ITS SO GOOD

  • Anonymous
    September 17, 2018 at 4:17 pm

    This is not a romance, they don’t focus on the romance in this because it’s not centered around that. It went into more detail about the scene with Lockwell because it shows that she is not comfortable with any of that. She is very defensive and guarded. She is still figuring out romance and it confuses Josie. Her better life is something that is away from Willie because she doesn’t want to become her mom. The “nieces” respect that and want it for her. Willie’s girls do that because they enjoy it or find it easy to get money. It has to do with personalities.

  • Nicole
    March 23, 2021 at 4:12 am

    What is the most important scene in this book, because i can’t really tell but i need this information.

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