Marilou is Everywhere
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE
For fans of Where the Crawdads Sing and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, a richly atmospheric debut about lost innocence and rural America...
'Remarkable. This novel reads like a miracle' NPR
'Brimming with longing, with heartbreak' New York Times
Jude is popular, beautiful, wealthier than most in Deep Valley. Cindy is Jude's neighbour - younger, poorer, a kid from the kind of family everyone knows will come to no good. Jude is black and Cindy is white.
One summer, Jude disappears. Search parties go out but come back empty-handed and strangely pleased. Jude thought she was better than everyone else. Look at her now. Meanwhile Cindy is performing a vanishing act of her own. She is slipping out of her old life and into someone else's. She is becoming Jude...
'Lyrical, sexy, humane, and just a total pleasure to read' Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot
'One of the most exquisitely written books I've read in a long time. A haunting novel about craving escape so badly you're willing to erase yourself, by a writer I would follow anywhere' Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Smith's solid debut follows the isolated and overlooked life of a teen in rural Pennsylvania. After 14-year-old Cindy Stoat and her older brothers, Clinton and Virgil, are abandoned by their mother, they make do with canned goods, candy, and income from the brothers' lawn-mowing business amid the constant meddling of education officials who hope to bring Cindy back to school. Their stagnant and isolated existence is broken open when a teenage neighbor, Jude Vanderjohn, goes missing. A popular but complicated girl, Jude is so much of what Cindy herself feels she could never be, and her disappearance rocks not only the community, but Cindy's day-to-day existence, especially after Virgil begins bringing her to spend time with Jude's mother, Bernadette. Bernadette is a former hippie, a half-mystic, and an alcoholic who mistakes Cindy for her disappeared daughter, an identity crisis that Cindy cherishes, hoping desperately for her life to change, and leading to a terrible decision as she tries to maintain the illusion. Smith's rural world is brought to life with precise and devastating descriptions of poverty and neglect, though sometimes the lyricism of the prose doesn't gel. Still, fans of Gabriel Tallent's My Absolute Darling will appreciate Cindy's toughened point of view and Smith's close attention to the details of rural Appalachian life. This is a promising debut.
