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Stories of precocious, neglected, abused children are only slightly less abundant than actual children who fall into that category. The perverse challenge, then, is to make the terror fresh (and/or sad, redemptive, sparkling, etc.). Tupelo Hassman's novel-in-vignettes hasn't succeeded to the extent that the blurbs on the back and the review I heard on NPR would have you believe. The voice of Rory Dawn Hendrix--the daughter and granddaughter of "feebleminded" women who got pregnant young and stayed poor and addicted--is overly precious (not to mention punny and tangled) at times, and doesn't seem to grow as the character does. The apparent inspirations that distinguish the novel--the Girl Scout Handbook and Buck v. Bell, a Supreme Court case granting institutions the right to sterilize mentally disabled women--get a little bit lost, surfacing without a lot of purpose.
But it's also that lost-ness that makes the story feel true. The telling does sparkle, riffing on everything from the Girl Scout Handbook to standardized tests to the prayer on the back of St. Jude candle, as if it say "This is what the world has handed us. This is what we must work with, even though it's never enough." Also, god bless any novel that believes neglectful, addicted mothers might still love their children, and that their children might not be so crazy to love them back. I'm really responsive to any story that unwraps that mother-child ache, and suggests that motherhood shouldn't be off limits to even the most feebleminded among us.
But it's also that lost-ness that makes the story feel true. The telling does sparkle, riffing on everything from the Girl Scout Handbook to standardized tests to the prayer on the back of St. Jude candle, as if it say "This is what the world has handed us. This is what we must work with, even though it's never enough." Also, god bless any novel that believes neglectful, addicted mothers might still love their children, and that their children might not be so crazy to love them back. I'm really responsive to any story that unwraps that mother-child ache, and suggests that motherhood shouldn't be off limits to even the most feebleminded among us.