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A review by debi_g
Flood by Melissa Scholes Young
4.0
"If you try to better yourself, you're acting like you're too good for the folks who raised you. If you stay and don't, you're a loser who never even tried" (16).
If I had to sum this book up in one word, it would be "cycles." The realistically repetitious loops of toxic friendships, romances, and family interactions comprise this novel, along with the interwoven spirals that accompany poverty and the working class: limited options, bad decisions, dependencies, arrests, injuries, acts of self-sabatoge, and lapses in employment. The main character tries to break free from numerous cycles, yet enables, accompanies, and engages in them repeatedly.
Melissa Scholes Young has accurately and vividly captures the flood of 1993 and the ensuing years in the northeastern Missouri region. Fashions, pastimes, and priorities all ring true. I lived an hour south of Hannibal for 17 years (and my NorCal soul never belonged).
While Laura is a useful "everywoman" filter for the story, she's a bit blank for my liking and I don't see why she puts up with Rose's shenanigans. In fact, this novel often reminded me of the students I had in that small town. They had a sense of being stuck, a feeling that options did not exist, or that they'd be better off spending their lives talking big about what could have been than to make a attempt and fail. I've seen 4.0 students too aware of their small pond to make the leap toward higher education. I've seen intentional pregnancies forever anchor young lives to bad relationships and limited geographies. One sad sophomore once wrote that her biggest regret was choosing the friends she'd become stuck with, and the reputation by association. This girl felt that by high school it was too late to make any changes and she simply had to accept that she'd forever be pulled and pushed by the tides of her friends' magnetic actions. It's like an equity joke how the metaphorical prison of low expectations, readily available drugs, and the reckless behavior borne of oppression condemns as many scattered, rural kids' futures as it does those held captive by urban decay.
There's no way to smoothly transition from that digression to this final quibble with an otherwise compelling novel: although it's true to local patterns of speech and errors in writing, I wish the author had not chosen to pepper the dialogue with "of" instead of "have." Characters consistently say they "could of" and "should of" when they mean they "would've," and it grates (perhaps intentionally).
If I had to sum this book up in one word, it would be "cycles." The realistically repetitious loops of toxic friendships, romances, and family interactions comprise this novel, along with the interwoven spirals that accompany poverty and the working class: limited options, bad decisions, dependencies, arrests, injuries, acts of self-sabatoge, and lapses in employment. The main character tries to break free from numerous cycles, yet enables, accompanies, and engages in them repeatedly.
Melissa Scholes Young has accurately and vividly captures the flood of 1993 and the ensuing years in the northeastern Missouri region. Fashions, pastimes, and priorities all ring true. I lived an hour south of Hannibal for 17 years (and my NorCal soul never belonged).
While Laura is a useful "everywoman" filter for the story, she's a bit blank for my liking and I don't see why she puts up with Rose's shenanigans. In fact, this novel often reminded me of the students I had in that small town. They had a sense of being stuck, a feeling that options did not exist, or that they'd be better off spending their lives talking big about what could have been than to make a attempt and fail. I've seen 4.0 students too aware of their small pond to make the leap toward higher education. I've seen intentional pregnancies forever anchor young lives to bad relationships and limited geographies. One sad sophomore once wrote that her biggest regret was choosing the friends she'd become stuck with, and the reputation by association. This girl felt that by high school it was too late to make any changes and she simply had to accept that she'd forever be pulled and pushed by the tides of her friends' magnetic actions. It's like an equity joke how the metaphorical prison of low expectations, readily available drugs, and the reckless behavior borne of oppression condemns as many scattered, rural kids' futures as it does those held captive by urban decay.
There's no way to smoothly transition from that digression to this final quibble with an otherwise compelling novel: although it's true to local patterns of speech and errors in writing, I wish the author had not chosen to pepper the dialogue with "of" instead of "have." Characters consistently say they "could of" and "should of" when they mean they "would've," and it grates (perhaps intentionally).