A Tiny Upward Shove
A Novel
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Wild and ambitious . . . [with] something ablaze at its core. It burns.” —The New York Times Book Review
A Tiny Upward Shove is inspired by Melissa Chadburn's Filipino heritage and its folklore, as it traces the too-short life of a young, cast-off woman transformed by death into an agent of justice—or mercy.
Marina Salles’s life does not end the day she wakes up dead.
Instead, in the course of a moment, she is transformed into the stuff of myth, the stuff of her grandmother’s old Filipino stories—an aswang, a creature of mystery and vengeance. She spent her time on earth on the margins; shot like a pinball through a childhood of loss, she was a veteran of Child Protective Services and a survivor, but always reacting, watching from a distance, understanding very little of her own life, let alone the lives of others. Death brings her into the hearts and minds of those she has known—even her killer—as she accesses their memories and sees anew the meaning of her own. In her nine days as an aswang, while she considers whether to exact vengeance on her killer, she also traces back, finally able to see what led these two lost souls to a crushingly inevitable conclusion.
In A Tiny Upward Shove, the debut novelist Melissa Chadburn charts the heartbreaking journeys of two of society’s castoffs as they make their way to each other and their roles as criminal and victim. What does it mean to be on the brink? When are those moments that change not only our lives but our very selves? And how, in this impossible world, full of cruelty and negligence, can we rouse ourselves toward mercy?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Chadburn's astonishing debut, the story of a Filipino woman's short life is told by an aswang spirit. In 1994, after 18-year-old Marina Salles is murdered by serial killer Willie Pickton, the folkloric and omniscient aswang enters her body and recounts Marina's harrowing coming-of-age. As a little girl, she moves with her mother, Mutya, to Westwood after Mutya is accepted at UCLA. While at a party thrown by Mutya's boyfriend, Marina is raped at 13, then placed by child services in a group home in the San Fernando Valley. The environment hardens Marina, though she develops a loving relationship with her new girlfriend, Alex, who is also a victim of child abuse. Marina is emancipated at 16 and moves to a rough South Los Angeles apartment complex where she gets hooked on heroin. Strung out, she goes to Vancouver to help Alex find her mother. She ends up doing sex work to pay for drugs and meets Willie, who preys on young women with drug problems. The author's poetic language enthralls, whether in relating the hardships of past generations of Salles women ("we broadcast them—each conversation a carnival of agonies"), or describing the bleak land of death ("There's no numbing dope, no dick wows, no kitty kitty yum yum, just a floodlight on all the world's needs"). This is electrifying.
