kyliecooper8 's review for:

Can You Feel This? by Julie Orringer

4.0

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"You think of the other mothers at the school in Tucson, the last known place before the motels and the smoke-fogged houses and the midnight parties and the train rides and the spilled food and the broken glass. You think of mothers arriving in clean cars to pick up their children and take them home to houses with food in the refrigerator, books on the shelves, crisp-made beds, seasonal decorations. You imagine a mother in an ironed shirt and clean white pants, drawing you close against her. And then you look at your own mother in her misbuttoned yellow dress, a smear of something on her cheek, her hair a smoky disaster, her eyes the eyes of a chased cat. You don’t say you hate her for all she’s done and hasn’t done. But for a moment you think it. And that’s when she goes."