hardcover, 224 pages
Published Nov. 17, 2020 by HarperVia, Harpervia.
I liked the concept of this story a lot. I love a surreal, weird story focused on women. But it was a story that also felt like it had a lot of filler for being so short. It might’ve worked better for me as a short story - or as a longer novel, more fleshed out.
I don’t know that I understood the ending. She trusts the reader a lot, and I felt like I had missed something. But that’s on me!
I hate the word “visceral” but if ever there were a novel that earned the descriptive, this is it. A young woman, part witch, mostly barrio urchin, communicates with the missing and dead of her neighborhood to learn the truth of what happened to them, while struggling to find meaning, purpose, or at least a moment of joy, in the gritty, desperate life she’s been given that - as her gift makes her all too aware - will likely be brief, brutal, and easily forgotten. I’ve never read a novel that felt more real, or more accepting, of its characters and setting.
