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lenascholman 's review for:
The Virgin Cure
by Ami McKay
If you really love linear stories with elegantly tied-up happy endings you may want to take a pass on “The Virgin Cure.”
If, however, you deduced from the macabre title that using virgins to cure anything isn’t usually all sugar coated gumdrops and you’re still willing to give it a go, your time will not be wasted. For fans of “The Birth House”, this second novel of poetic east coast darling Ami McKay, doesn’t disappoint.
The story begins with these words:
“I am Moth. A girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.”
We learn pretty early on that if Moth is going to survive the hardscrabble world of New York City circa. 1870 she is going to have to rely on her wits to make it. Here’s how she’s describes her own view of the future ahead of her:
“Girls sold matches and pins, then flowers and hot corn, and then themselves.
By nine, ten, eleven years old, you could feel it coming, the empty-bellied life of your mother—always having to decide what to give up next, which trinket to sell, which dreams to forget. The most valuable thing a girl possessed was hidden between her legs, waiting to be sold to the highest bidder. It was never a question of yes or no. It was simply a matter of which man would have you first.”
Moth knows what’s coming and as she’s suddenly catapulted into independence on the streets, she is offered several different options to make a life for herself. McKay paints a fascinating picture of both high and low society and their many intersections. Through her elegant prose but also through the interjections of authentic artefacts and fictional period newspaper articles, à la Wayne Johnson in his recreation of the life of Joey Smallwood in “The Colony of Unrequited Dreams” she pulls the reader into an underworld wrought tangible through her incredible descriptions. I felt as though I was at times wearing an ill-fitting corset, eating fresh oysters in the rain and listening to the clink and clatter of a mortar’s pestle in a 19th century apothecary’ shop.
Through McKay’s colourful cast of characters- from Moth’s gypsy mother to the elegant Miss. Everett to the soulful and compassionate Dr. Sadie, we are transported to a world where women in turn discard, abuse, extort and betray one another. However, I said that this book was worth the read, and here’s why; as in the “The Birth House”, although women on the fringes of society are marginalized most tragically by other women, occasionally, triumphantly, sometimes a woman will rescue one of its own, and that’s a story worth reading over and over.
If, however, you deduced from the macabre title that using virgins to cure anything isn’t usually all sugar coated gumdrops and you’re still willing to give it a go, your time will not be wasted. For fans of “The Birth House”, this second novel of poetic east coast darling Ami McKay, doesn’t disappoint.
The story begins with these words:
“I am Moth. A girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.”
We learn pretty early on that if Moth is going to survive the hardscrabble world of New York City circa. 1870 she is going to have to rely on her wits to make it. Here’s how she’s describes her own view of the future ahead of her:
“Girls sold matches and pins, then flowers and hot corn, and then themselves.
By nine, ten, eleven years old, you could feel it coming, the empty-bellied life of your mother—always having to decide what to give up next, which trinket to sell, which dreams to forget. The most valuable thing a girl possessed was hidden between her legs, waiting to be sold to the highest bidder. It was never a question of yes or no. It was simply a matter of which man would have you first.”
Moth knows what’s coming and as she’s suddenly catapulted into independence on the streets, she is offered several different options to make a life for herself. McKay paints a fascinating picture of both high and low society and their many intersections. Through her elegant prose but also through the interjections of authentic artefacts and fictional period newspaper articles, à la Wayne Johnson in his recreation of the life of Joey Smallwood in “The Colony of Unrequited Dreams” she pulls the reader into an underworld wrought tangible through her incredible descriptions. I felt as though I was at times wearing an ill-fitting corset, eating fresh oysters in the rain and listening to the clink and clatter of a mortar’s pestle in a 19th century apothecary’ shop.
Through McKay’s colourful cast of characters- from Moth’s gypsy mother to the elegant Miss. Everett to the soulful and compassionate Dr. Sadie, we are transported to a world where women in turn discard, abuse, extort and betray one another. However, I said that this book was worth the read, and here’s why; as in the “The Birth House”, although women on the fringes of society are marginalized most tragically by other women, occasionally, triumphantly, sometimes a woman will rescue one of its own, and that’s a story worth reading over and over.