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A review by gschwabauer
Every Single Second by Tricia Springstubb
3.0
This was a weird read.
The author wanted to tackle about 57 different topics—the awkwardness of shifting friendships, the temptation to ditch people when their problems get too difficult, race relations, cycles of family violence, the need to "soften" and accept help and community from others, dealing with change, , the importance of seemingly tiny actions, parental guilt and dishonesty, alcoholism, gun violence, forgiveness, grandparents and health decline, the list just goes on and on and on.
The items on that list that WERE done well were done really well. Nella's friendships with Clem and Angela were distinct, vivid, and moving. Nella was a believable, compelling narrator who made lots of mistakes but never crossed the line into being unlikeable. The themes of guilt/shame and being unsure how to relate to a friend whose life (especially family) are just objectively a lot worse than yours were handled excellently. If she'd stuck with that, this would have been a great read!
But then the author just kind of chucked in a bunch of other stuff so that most of it never got the page space it would have needed to unfold in a satisfying way. There's a subplot about a black man being shot by a white man, and the story simply doesn't have the time to unpack that situation. We get a feel-good moment at the end where the protagonist gives money to the victim's family and gets to make a speech on TV about how we have to "let things like this change us," but it's not super clear what kind of tangible change we're talking about. Is the message to just not be racist? Because the killer also wasn't racist in any overt sense, just traumatized and quite possibly falling prey so subconscious biases, so I guess we need to combat our own subconscious biases by......giving money......to grieving families? Or something? The whole thing was just so uncomfortable. I have no problem with the humanization of the shooter, or of the discussion about how cycles of violence can perpetuate terrible mistakes in good, kind people, but I was pretty squirmy about the whole assuaging-of-white-guilt feeling surrounding the entire conclusion. Also the freaking statue was so on-the-nose that it felt like the author didn't trust me to understand her story without overwrought "heart of stone" metaphors.
The author wanted to tackle about 57 different topics—the awkwardness of shifting friendships, the temptation to ditch people when their problems get too difficult, race relations, cycles of family violence, the need to "soften" and accept help and community from others, dealing with change, , the importance of seemingly tiny actions, parental guilt and dishonesty, alcoholism, gun violence, forgiveness, grandparents and health decline, the list just goes on and on and on.
The items on that list that WERE done well were done really well. Nella's friendships with Clem and Angela were distinct, vivid, and moving. Nella was a believable, compelling narrator who made lots of mistakes but never crossed the line into being unlikeable. The themes of guilt/shame and being unsure how to relate to a friend whose life (especially family) are just objectively a lot worse than yours were handled excellently. If she'd stuck with that, this would have been a great read!
But then the author just kind of chucked in a bunch of other stuff so that most of it never got the page space it would have needed to unfold in a satisfying way. There's a subplot about a black man being shot by a white man, and the story simply doesn't have the time to unpack that situation. We get a feel-good moment at the end where the protagonist gives money to the victim's family and gets to make a speech on TV about how we have to "let things like this change us," but it's not super clear what kind of tangible change we're talking about. Is the message to just not be racist? Because the killer also wasn't racist in any overt sense, just traumatized and quite possibly falling prey so subconscious biases, so I guess we need to combat our own subconscious biases by......giving money......to grieving families? Or something? The whole thing was just so uncomfortable. I have no problem with the humanization of the shooter, or of the discussion about how cycles of violence can perpetuate terrible mistakes in good, kind people, but I was pretty squirmy about the whole assuaging-of-white-guilt feeling surrounding the entire conclusion. Also the freaking statue was so on-the-nose that it felt like the author didn't trust me to understand her story without overwrought "heart of stone" metaphors.