Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Il caos da cui veniamo

It had some of the most beautiful storytelling I've ever read and some of the ugliest, most heartbreaking stories. Reading this was hard. It hurt. I cried through most of it. I felt heavy and cracked open and couldn't imagine how our protagonist Betty shouldered so much pain when I could barely read it.

To be a woman in this novel was to suffer.

"You know what the heaviest thing in the world is, Betty? It's a man on top of you when you don't want him to be."

"By that time, I was at a point in my life where I had a very particular image of God in my head. I imagined God was a woman in a torn satin bed jacket with falling curlers in her messy hair. She sat in a bed of dirty sheets, surrounded by a canopy of sheer curtains spiders clung to. She ate chocolates from a box until her teeth were rotted and the box was empty, ready to be piled with the smashed boxes already on the floor. Blush was streaked across her cheeks like something trying to run away. Lipstick bled outside the lines of her lips as if they were melting. She was a woman used and left by humanity in ways only we know how to consume and leave."

With all this suffering, I was amazed by how much hope remained threaded throughout every chapter. Why? Betty had the most loving, imaginative father you could imagine. He was a Cherokee man married to a white woman in a time when nothing kind came from having brown skin. He struggled and failed to give his children what they needed at times, but he persevered and loved them all, even the bad ones. He filled their minds with the most beautiful stories that tried to make them feel special and worth something in a world that was constantly pushing them down.

"The first woman was given antlers on her head to branch her power out into the world," he said, digging the rake deeper. "Slugs are frightened of that power because they are spineless creatures, and all spineless creatures are frightened of a woman's power."

"He would stretch her hands out to either side of her. 'You're my centimeter, inch, and foot. The distance between your hands is the distance that measures everything between the sun and the moon. Only a woman can measure such things.' 'Why?' Fraya asked to remind herself. 'Because you're powerful.'"

"He kissed my forehead. 'I don't know if I've ever told you that I love you, Little Indian. I don't know if I've ever said those words.' 'You said them every time you told me a story.' I looked into his eyes...'Have I ever told you I loved you?' I asked because I really didn't know. 'Every time you listened to one of my stories.'"

The relationship between Betty and her father is built on these stories, and they get Betty past all the hurdles of "coming of age against the knife" to become a writer herself. I adored him and Betty, and I left this book with great respect for Tiffany McDaniel's family history.

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apairofducks's review against another edition

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5.0

What a stunningly beautiful book. The prose was magical, and every character hurt. What is there to say about this book except: read this if your heart aches.

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michelles_book_nook's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

⚠️ CW: racism, violence, bullying, homophobia, murder, mental health, suicide, abortion, incest, rape, sexual abuse, paedophilia and child death ⚠️ If you're looking for a beautifully devastating and complex coming of age story then this one is for you! Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a white mother and a Cherokee father, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit in the rural town of Breathed, Ohio, is one of poverty and loss, of lush landscapes and blazing stars. Despite the hardships she encounters, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination. And in the face of everything she witnesses, including the horrors of her family's past and present, she discovers an escape in writing. This book was everything I hoped for and more. It is so tragic, but also so beautiful and I don't really know how to explain what I mean by that right now but if you've read this you'll understand. Betty is the most incredible character who will stay with me for a very long time. A lot of the themes running through this book really hit hard for me and I definitely needed some tissues to get through it, but the resilience Betty built through her own will and the teachings from her father about life in general and her Cherokee ancestry were just so incredibly powerful. To put it simply I adored this book and it may easily be my favourite of the year. Overall, I highly recommend this book but please check the CW's before diving in.

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polly_baker's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Wallop. A coming-of-age, family saga the tracks the paths of inheritance, equal parts darkness and light.

I absolutely loved Betty. Her first person narration, channeled through McDaniel's lyrical prose, amplified the wonder, the confusion, the joy and the hurt that punctuated her childhood and adolescence.

It is all at once a celebration and a damnation of the things we acquire, generation to generation. Parallels are drawn between the indigenous wisdom Betty is gifted from her Cherokee father, and the generational trauma she endures from her mother's abusive past. Betty's narrative gives voice to the many children who bear the burdens of their elders, carrying pain silently, burying it in jam-jars deep beneath the ground.

Betty's father is portrayed through her child's eyes as god-like and mythical, strengthened through his indigenous stories and the knowledge and reverence he held for the Earth. The Cherokee heritage is celebrated and foregrounded, even amidst a world working its hardest to erase it. Betty struggles with her identity as tales of the matriarchal power and strength of the Cherokee collide with a patriarchal and capitalist America, which systematically dismantles indigenous pride, and cultivates shame in its place.

It is a challenging read (worth checking the trigger warnings for) as Betty has borne witness to a multitude of traumatic incidents during her upbringing. But this is not trauma porn... Betty is based on the story of McDaniel's own mother, rooted very much in reality and in the shaping of Betty Carpenter, a new favourite character, and human, who I already deeply miss.

<i>“I realized then that not only did Dad need us to believe his stories, we needed to believe them as well. To believe in unripe stars and eagles able to do extraordinary things. What it boiled down to was a frenzied hope that there was more to life than the reality around us. Only then could we claim a destiny we did not feel cursed to.”</i>

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