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katejohn's review against another edition
5.0
I could not put this book down. The unconventional style speaks volumes to how family stories are pieced together: through snippets of facts, generational storytelling, with our own experiences filling in the gaps. This book particularly struck a chord with me as my own grandmother was a teacher at the home school in Sauk Centre, MN in the 60s-80s, not long after V herself was there. An absolute fascinating read that will stick with me for awhile.
katherine_elizab's review against another edition
5.0
An incredibly moving, taught, careful, heartbreaking novel. I love the way this book complicates and throws out the tired, unhelpful binary between fact and fiction. This book gets to the heart of truth, which is ultimately, a blend of fact and fiction, or maybe something in between the two. O'Connor uncovers a historical practice I knew nothing about: our country used to send young, pregnant, unwed girls away to delinquency homes to be punished and to birth the baby in secret. The renderings of the young V with her baby broke me, made me cry. This book deals with the pain of uncovering history, the pain of not knowing enough, and the necessary, life-giving act of filling in the blanks the best you can. The unfair blankness of so many womens' lives. The legacy we pass down, even if nothing is spoken, even if it's silence.
ananamauvais's review
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Forced institutionalization, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide
heatheradiamond's review against another edition
5.0
Part memoir and part fiction, this book is breathtaking--innovative in its braided form and mix of facts and imagined narrative, disturbing in its revelations about how young women were ostracized and disciplined for their perceived "immorality." As we follow the narrator's efforts to unearth her mother's adoption history, we are dawn into the hidden history of incarceration for girls deemed socially aberrant. The fictional thread that imagines the life of the missing grandmother is a spellbinding and poignant reminder of both personal and social loss when women's voices are silenced.
ssaurer's review
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
ash_flygare's review
dark
emotional
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
vintage__victoria's review against another edition
5.0
This is such a beautifully written novel. Because the women are no longer alive, and cannot tell their own story, O’Connor does. However, because she does not want to try and write about an experience she did not live, she takes what she learned in research and what was in her grandmother’s file to create “a novel in fragments, facts and fictions”, as declared on the cover. While reading her book, I was reminded through the poetry, lines from laws on delinquency, and commentary in brackets, that although she is writing this story and doing her best to tell it accurately, she is incapable of telling it. Only the young women that experienced punishment for delinquency can tell their story. She appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos wrapped tightly together to create this powerful story that was almost forgotten.
katherinenelson03's review
dark
informative
sad
slow-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
2.75