The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 22 May 2022
by Sarah Manguso
The aphorism says that every family is unhappy in its own way. But, in truth, unhappiness is familiar to us all, and there are particular ways in which we can relate to the sadness and tragedy of almost any family. Unhappiness, to paraphrase another aphorism, rhymes. In this small novel that reads like a memoir, we meet Ruth, who grew up in the 1980s, in a Boston suburb within a family with Italian and Jewish roots. What unfolds is a tapestry of memories from her childhood through high school, moments that vividly evoke the time and place of her story.
There are familiar formative moments, those things we all know from our childhood, primary school years, and adolescence. Here, the episodes largely illustrate the relationship between Ruth and her mother, a woman so bitter and controlling that we think she is trying to crush Ruth's spirit. Inevitably, as a young girl growing up in a working-class community, Ruth and her friends must navigate those predators who prey on small children, particularly girls. The tale, which began in the innocence of young childhood, quickly turns toward darkness as Ruth's friends struggle with identity, sex, and the threats from all around them, even from their own families. The story becomes almost relentlessly bleak here, as Ruth struggles, herself, to understand why her world is the way it is. Eventually, we must face the fact that emotional damage, the pain of plain survival, is, like blue eyes and kinky hair, inherited from our ancestors. Ruth must now find a way to deal with that, and to not pass it on to her own children. So, the book is initially deceptive. We enjoy its references to familiar childhood memories. But, as we read, we see not only Ruth's struggles, but may also encounter our own.