Girlchild: A Novel [Hardcover]

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Girlchild: A Novel [Hardcover]

Product Details

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (February 14, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0374162573
ISBN-13: 978-0374162573
Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

By : Tupelo Hassman
Price : $16.15
You Save : $7.85 (33%)

Customer Reviews

Rory Dawn Hendrix lives with her mom in the Calle de las Flores Trailer Park, just north of Reno and just south of nowhere. Rory can trace her lively lineage through three generations of high-school dropouts, unwed mothers, welfare moms, alcoholics, gamblers, bartenders and bar hoppers.
But little Rory is smart, a big surprise to all concerned. She can spell anything and gets good grades. Much of her wisdom comes from reading the Girl Scout Handbook over and over, giving each section her own edgy interpretation. Of course there are no Girl Scouts in the Calle. Rory is a troop of one.
The plot takes us from Rory's girlhood to her fifteenth year, during which short span some very bad things happen and a few good things. Although mothering is not a strong suit in the Hendrix family, Rory loves her mother and grandmother and gives us a moving picture of these vibrant women through personal observation, social worker files, letters and local lore. At the same time, she tells her own story, which is a shocker.
The novel is a knockout cocktail of humor, misery and entirely original ingredients. The writing is terrific, with a jazzy-bluesy flavor. Elements of surrealism and a weakness for wordplay show up now and then in the unpredictable narrative structure.
I tend to get confused when style overshadows storyline, and this happens occasionally in Girlchild. But other readers will be more adventurous and have no difficulties, I'm sure, with the stylistic detours. I enjoyed the novel and would recommend it to readers with a taste for experimental fiction.

Girlchild is a novel that is unlike almost anything else I've ever read. It is like opening the pages of a young girl's diary and finding the most beautiful poetry. It's funny, tragic, hopeful, devastatingly sad, naive and wise and ultimately glorious. Rory Hendrix lives in poverty with her single mother in a single wide trailer in the desert of Nevada. She has everything working against her but she always seems to find the good in life anyway. Her story will pull you in and make you want to know this child and to save her, but then you realize she is saving herself because it's what she has to do in order to survive. Tupelo Hassman's writing is truly radiant in this novel. She goes back and forth between narrative by Rory to strange word problems describing the most unimaginable situations to just bits of paragraphs showing through blacked out lines on the page. All of it fits perfectly to show the reader who Rory Dawn is and to make us feel what she is feeling. It is told in single to 3 page length chapters which keeps the novel moving at a very fast pace.
I was completely enchanted by this novel. I would love to see a movie about Rory Dawn and will definitely be on the lookout for more from Tupelo Hassman.