She is ten years old. She loves storybooks, puppies, and murder. Her mother knows. She has always known. And still she runs with her, steals for her, looks the other way—because she is her little girl. Because somewhere beneath those flat, patient eyes is the child she once rocked to sleep.
Isn’t she?
In the gritty, pre-everything America of the early 1980s, a mother and daughter are leaving a quiet trail of bodies across state lines. When a dangerous man steps into their orbit and the police close in from behind, the mother faces the question she has spent a decade outrunning.
What is she raising? What has she always been raising? And what happens when her daughter decides she’s better off alone?
Overall, there's quite a lot to like here. The immensely fun setup, detailing the history and family relationship that comes about as the mother and daughter take their trip across the country, trying to make a living in a slew of compromising dive-bars and sleazy motels, sets this up rather nicely by providing the kind of neglected universe where everything can logically flow from. The daughter's reaction to everything, viciously and violently killing others along the trip as the mother tries to move them along to avoid being caught, under the guise of trying to support the bloodlust as a way of being supportive of her, is a lot of fun and manages to bring this out rather well. With the way this all gets balanced out by the kind of work accomplished by the stellar revelations brought about in the second half, where the series of disturbing background bits of information brought about the history of murderous instinct within the family, this story all comes together rather well.
While it has a lot to like, the structure of these revelations is a rather bizarre take on how it's all set together. Rather than make the family legacy something that's hinted at throughout the book as they travel throughout the countryside, this focuses on the daughter's rampage and her mother's attempts at codifying the vicious outbursts as they go, so that the series of interactions the mother has with her boyfriend and his ex-wife is all unnecessary to the main story. This all keeps the family dynamics with the mom and her grandfather that helps to explain the daughter's violence and general behavior to this out-of-nowhere section of the book without a lot of build-up, so while it fits into the theme and story and explains things rather nicely, this is a bit of a weird way to introduce such an important part of the story. However, this is a minor quibble and doesn't detract from the rest of this, with the bloody kill scenes and frenetic narrative keeping this interesting throughout.
4.5/5
Comments
Post a Comment