she reads it herself and I dont think I could take it any other way

I got a secondhand copy from the hospital charity shop for a pound. the one on the ground floor run by volunteers that smells a bit like a church. somebody had written a name in the front, Denise, 1989, and I keep thinking about Denise.

I knew the shape of it before I started, everyone sort of does, the mute years, the church, the graduation. what nobody had told me is how funny it is in places, and how much of it is really about her grandmother. Momma running that store, the whole economy of the town going through one woman who barely says anything. the scene with the girls in the yard is the one that stays with me. she does not raise her voice once and you can feel the whole thing from a hundred years away.

the assault chapter I had to put down for two days. I have taken a history from a child once, early on, and I am not going to say anything else about that here except that the way she writes the silence afterwards is the most accurate thing I have ever read about what it does to somebody. the guilt for a thing you didnt do. it is not dramatic on the page and thats exactly why it works.

the sentences themselves are the other thing. she writes long and then very short and you dont notice her doing it until it has already happened. I read a bit out loud to a colleague on a break, the graduation, the song, and she made me read it again. then we had to go back on and neither of us said much for a while.

I found the closing stretch harder. once she gets to San Francisco the book loosens and speeds up and I liked it less, which might just be me, I think I wanted to stay in Stamps. the streetcar job story is wonderful though. she wanted the job and she just sat there until they gave it to her, and it's told with no triumph in it at all, like it was the obvious thing to do.

my mum read this at about my age and we ended up on the phone about it for an hour and a half, which we never do. she remembered different things than me. she remembered the mother, I remembered the grandmother, and I dont think either of us is wrong.

9 rather than 10 only because the ending arrives very suddenly and I sat there going, oh, thats it? and then I went back and read the last two pages again and I still felt it stopped early. everything else about it is as good as people say and I am cross with sixteen year old me for assuming she already knew what was in it.

anyway. a pound. best pound Ive spent this year