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“It’s been a long time since the first two lines of a novel have grabbed me like these did:
I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.
Libby is not an easy character to like. I don’t think she’s as mean as she portends to be, but at age 32 she’s completely incapable of taking care of herself, expecting to live forever on the kindness of strangers, either through their charity or her thievery. On the other hand, the majority of her family was killed horrifically when she was 7, and how should a person recover from that? I have to admit I warmed up to her a little as she tripped along, trying to piece together what happened that night. The back of the novel tries to sell you on the suspense of "Libby on the run from a killer", but that part happens so quickly that it’s not where the suspense lies. The suspense in this novel is in the shifting narrative between Libby’s brother, Ben, and her mother, Patty. As the story unfolds, I think it ends up being not only about the actual events, but about how little you can know about such a tragedy. I never could have guessed how things actually happened.”
miyurose wrote this review Friday, May 29 2009.
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