Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness)'s Reviews > Writers & Lovers

What happens if you are abandoned at an early age, then again, then again. Never provided the opportunity of having that parent within guiding you to, finding who you are, then to separate-individuate becoming the person who you are meant to be; leaving it just beyond your reach?

A self which does not adhere, existing in particles to someday be gathered into a whole. The scars and stillness of abandonment where writing her novel is the only place where she feels, ‘home’. This 31 year old woman has been working on it for the past six years, living in a room off a garage, buried under thousands of dollars of debt mostly from college loans, while working as a waitress. Having moved many times she has been in a number of passing relationships.

This is all told from the first person. From her. She is not a character in a book but has let me into her life in all its particulars and written in a sparse but lyrical prose which fits perfectly with what she had to say; what she was telling me. Who she was and who she was becoming. It flowed effortlessly at just the right pace.

Her hopes-attempts to live the literary life, to continue her persistence to volley through the trials of writing, her life at the restaurant, but most of all her unending willful endurance; makes this book such a quality piece of literature and an exceptional reading experience.

I have never cried reading a book. Twice I cried tears of joy for her. What happened to her, to her life, meant so much to me without any shred of sentimentality.

An astonishing reading experience highly recommended to all.