A review by ericgaryanderson
The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy by Cherie Dimaline

5.0

Damn. This one wobbled for me a little at first because the allegorical planets—Alienation, Envy, etc.—that orbit poor Ruby Moore's head seemed a tad heavy-handed as literary devices. But the more I read, the more I was hooked. This is at heart a coming-of-age novel about Ruby, whose anxieties and OCD and more are presented with great empathy, honesty, and respect. (I'll stop here in talking about the plot so that I can avoid spoilers.) The native southern turn, from Toronto to New Orleans, is absolutely fantastic, and the writing is smart, beautiful, and powerful, especially in the ways it evokes how Ruby is made of water and, in a variety of ways, birthed by and carried through and transformed by water. But there's so much more here, too; I'll be thinking and writing about and (to borrow a metaphor from the novel) inhaling and exhaling elements of this book for a long time, very much including all that it does with Indigenous undeadness and rumored vampires. I've only read two of her novels, this one and the incredible Marrow Thieves, but I'm already ready to say that Dimaline is one of the most exciting and most satisfying of a group of seriously talented younger Indigenous writers.