gods with a little g
Tupelo Hassman
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
gods with a little g
Tupelo Hassman
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Teenagers exist in a world of heightened emotions, and it can be tricky for writers to evoke that state of mind without seeming either distant or patronizing. This isn't a problem for Hassman — as in her debut novel, girlchild, she captures the anxieties and affections of young people in a perfectly realistic way, without a note of condescension.
...light shines through in almost every line.
Hassman offers us a vision of regular small-town folks enacting the worst aspects of themselves and their religion; a vision all the more salient in the current climate where abolishing people and ideas we don’t like has become the new American dream.
As she did in her striking debut, Girlchild (2012), Hassman imaginatively parcels out her second novel in titled chapters.
... [a] balls-to-the-wall YA crossover novel.
... it’s a testament to Hassman’s skill as a writer that readers not only don’t find these mistakes frustrating but actually understand why Helen makes them. Throughout, her witty, irreverent, progressive voice and unique point of view propel readers to keep reading even when the subject matter proves difficult. Some readers might find the setting of Rosary, California, hard to stomach, and for good reason.
It is, perhaps, easier to appreciate this novel by not thinking of it as a novel. It’s written in the first person, there’s a lot more telling than showing, and there are vast narrative territories that are barely explored. Read as a collection of very short fictions, though, the book coalescences as a melancholy, triumphant, slightly magical coming-of-age tale. Hassman creates a world that seems to be defined through stark dualities, but the story tends toward chaos in the sense that no certainty, no opposition, goes unquestioned.
... charming and funny.