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A review by erinys
Every Bone a Prayer by Ashley Blooms
5.0
If you're already planning to read this book, maybe skip my review below until you're done reading. My notes are mildly spoilerish. I hope that talking about it here will help the book find its audience; it deserves to be read by the people who need it.
First note: Dear GODS do not mis-label this book!! It is NOT YA, and it is NOT for kids. I personally would characterize it as horror in many ways, but most people would call it dark fantasy and I've seen other reviewers call it "magical realism", but given that Blooms is writing about white Appalachians, I'm not sure how that label is justified.
I'm also not sure whether any part of the book was inspired by "Each Bone a Prayer", the poem by Sandra Alcosser, but there might be a connection with the final line:
"In Nepal, you tell me, love is easy,
All wheels are spun clockwise, and the dead
are buried comfortably in the walls
of their own homes."
The reason I think this book belongs on my Mensch List is that the author has PTSD, and the book deals very explicitly with a PTSD perspective. In fact, this is one of the few books I've ever read where characters with supernatural powers find that their powers, and the way they manifest, are specifically impacted and shaped by a traumatic experience.
In some ways, this is a story I find difficult to recommend--certainly it's one I cannot recommend lightly. It's beautifully written, the prose is lyrical, the craftmanship of the novel is excellent. But ultimately it's a book ABOUT children which is not FOR children, and specifically it depicts the experience of sexual assault from a child's perspective. This is not a topic which everyone can cope with. In some cases it's because it triggers your own past trauma; in other cases people might find it overwhelmingly depressing.
If it makes a difference in terms of content warning, the perpetrator of the assault is not a predatory adult, but another abused child. But this doesn't make a huge difference in the impact on the protagonist. When Misty is cornered by her friend William in the barn, she goes through a lot of the pain that is common to all victims of rape: depersonalization during the event, shame and self-blame after, an inability to communicate her pain to family members and a loss of support as she flounders to carry the load alone, self-isolation, brain fog or cognitive impairment, feelings of dissociation from her body, rejection of her body and an impulse to self-harm...etc..
The author isn't excessive in depicting the gruesome details of the assault(s) that Misty endures, but the emotional experience of life both before and after being assaulted is captured quite vividly--and to be honest, the way that sexual assault can break the relationship between body and soul is the central metaphor of the book.
The union of body and soul is the heart of the magic in this world. Misty is a 10-year-old wizard, and in this world almost all wizardry seems to be reserved to women and girls. Magic is the ability to connect deeply/telepathically with the landscape that surrounds you--which for Misty, includes every form of interwoven life in an Appalachian holler. Birds, bees, animals, trees--everything communicates with Misty, and she talks back. Her special friends are the crawdads.
Misty's understanding of this connection between Self and Nature is filtered through her own lens. Her mother has taught her that "prayer" is opening your heart to God/the Universe. Her magic, the communion with the living world, is based on her ability to open her heart and give her mystical Name to others, whiles she listens to/receives their Names in return.
Names are not just words or sounds. A Name is a telepathic stream of life experiences and emotions. Misty's Name is a highlight reel of her own existence, the things which have shaped her, good and bad; all the birds, beasts, plants and insects have Names as well, which they share with her in return. This sharing allows her to communicate, connect, attract and influence them...and if she was an older wizard, her power might allow her to perform wonders that are beyond a child's imagination.
At age 10, however, Misty already finds that connecting to other humans, even her sister Penny and her parents, is almost impossible. They cannot seem to open their hearts fully and share their Names with one another the way animals and insects, trees and flowers can, and Misty really doesn't understand why. This strange inability to open up, to share your truth perplexes her. She is too young to have experienced anything like real shame--she's never had a life experience she felt the need to deny or suppress. There has been no pain that she could not bear to share, even if that pain defines her privately.
When Misty loses her innocence, however, her power is not just diminished but transformed. She doesn't stop being magical--but she begins to be cut off. Trauma causes her abilities to manifest in new ways, sometimes strange and ugly, self-destructive ways. And she quickly discovers that she is not the only wizard who has ever lived in the holler.
In this world, women with great sensitivity and power, when they come to a bad end, do not always stay quietly buried. One of the things that makes this novel great is not just its sense of Appalachia as a physical landscape, but as an emotional and cultural landscape that women and girls have to navigate. Misty's mother, her aunt, her sister Penny, and the other women in her world are beautifully rendered, but the character of Caroline is a horrific masterpiece.
Anyway. The book is a beautiful, surreal, painful trip. Some of the imagery of Misty exploring her power in the second half is very intense. But ultimately I found the book hopeful, and very much worth reading.
First note: Dear GODS do not mis-label this book!! It is NOT YA, and it is NOT for kids. I personally would characterize it as horror in many ways, but most people would call it dark fantasy and I've seen other reviewers call it "magical realism", but given that Blooms is writing about white Appalachians, I'm not sure how that label is justified.
I'm also not sure whether any part of the book was inspired by "Each Bone a Prayer", the poem by Sandra Alcosser, but there might be a connection with the final line:
"In Nepal, you tell me, love is easy,
All wheels are spun clockwise, and the dead
are buried comfortably in the walls
of their own homes."
The reason I think this book belongs on my Mensch List is that the author has PTSD, and the book deals very explicitly with a PTSD perspective. In fact, this is one of the few books I've ever read where characters with supernatural powers find that their powers, and the way they manifest, are specifically impacted and shaped by a traumatic experience.
In some ways, this is a story I find difficult to recommend--certainly it's one I cannot recommend lightly. It's beautifully written, the prose is lyrical, the craftmanship of the novel is excellent. But ultimately it's a book ABOUT children which is not FOR children, and specifically it depicts the experience of sexual assault from a child's perspective. This is not a topic which everyone can cope with. In some cases it's because it triggers your own past trauma; in other cases people might find it overwhelmingly depressing.
If it makes a difference in terms of content warning, the perpetrator of the assault is not a predatory adult, but another abused child. But this doesn't make a huge difference in the impact on the protagonist. When Misty is cornered by her friend William in the barn, she goes through a lot of the pain that is common to all victims of rape: depersonalization during the event, shame and self-blame after, an inability to communicate her pain to family members and a loss of support as she flounders to carry the load alone, self-isolation, brain fog or cognitive impairment, feelings of dissociation from her body, rejection of her body and an impulse to self-harm...etc..
The author isn't excessive in depicting the gruesome details of the assault(s) that Misty endures, but the emotional experience of life both before and after being assaulted is captured quite vividly--and to be honest, the way that sexual assault can break the relationship between body and soul is the central metaphor of the book.
The union of body and soul is the heart of the magic in this world. Misty is a 10-year-old wizard, and in this world almost all wizardry seems to be reserved to women and girls. Magic is the ability to connect deeply/telepathically with the landscape that surrounds you--which for Misty, includes every form of interwoven life in an Appalachian holler. Birds, bees, animals, trees--everything communicates with Misty, and she talks back. Her special friends are the crawdads.
Misty's understanding of this connection between Self and Nature is filtered through her own lens. Her mother has taught her that "prayer" is opening your heart to God/the Universe. Her magic, the communion with the living world, is based on her ability to open her heart and give her mystical Name to others, whiles she listens to/receives their Names in return.
Names are not just words or sounds. A Name is a telepathic stream of life experiences and emotions. Misty's Name is a highlight reel of her own existence, the things which have shaped her, good and bad; all the birds, beasts, plants and insects have Names as well, which they share with her in return. This sharing allows her to communicate, connect, attract and influence them...and if she was an older wizard, her power might allow her to perform wonders that are beyond a child's imagination.
At age 10, however, Misty already finds that connecting to other humans, even her sister Penny and her parents, is almost impossible. They cannot seem to open their hearts fully and share their Names with one another the way animals and insects, trees and flowers can, and Misty really doesn't understand why. This strange inability to open up, to share your truth perplexes her. She is too young to have experienced anything like real shame--she's never had a life experience she felt the need to deny or suppress. There has been no pain that she could not bear to share, even if that pain defines her privately.
When Misty loses her innocence, however, her power is not just diminished but transformed. She doesn't stop being magical--but she begins to be cut off. Trauma causes her abilities to manifest in new ways, sometimes strange and ugly, self-destructive ways. And she quickly discovers that she is not the only wizard who has ever lived in the holler.
In this world, women with great sensitivity and power, when they come to a bad end, do not always stay quietly buried. One of the things that makes this novel great is not just its sense of Appalachia as a physical landscape, but as an emotional and cultural landscape that women and girls have to navigate. Misty's mother, her aunt, her sister Penny, and the other women in her world are beautifully rendered, but the character of Caroline is a horrific masterpiece.
Anyway. The book is a beautiful, surreal, painful trip. Some of the imagery of Misty exploring her power in the second half is very intense. But ultimately I found the book hopeful, and very much worth reading.