Check Out This Book Review: Growing Girls

I haven’t read the book Growing Girls, by Jeanne Marie Laskas, and I’ll be perfectly honest and say that I’m not sure how far up it is on my list.

But not only did Kev Minh over at Borrowed Notes read it, he wrote a fascinating 3-part review of it. (One of his poems was also published in the book, interestingly enough.)

Check out his review Can One Poem Subvert a Whole Novel?: (I’ve excerpted a few paragraphs below.)

Laskas functions like a mother, but her inner dialogue betrays a slight repulsion toward her charges. There’s something wrong with the chickens, there’s something wrong with the donkey, there’s something wrong with Anna because she went through a tutu phase and there’s something wrong with Sasha because somehow the orphanage delayed her speech development. It seems as though that if her immediate surroundings are not up to her specifications, if things aren’t done by the book, then she faults the actors in her life for not following the script she wrote in her head long before.

…

But, I can’t abide by the attitude Laskas takes toward Anna and Sasha’s mothers. It’s as if she is sending a postcard to her daughters’ Chinese mothers apologizing for not writing because she is busy being the kind of mother they chose not to be to their own children. It’s as if she is telling them that she has taken on the challenge of cleaning up their mess and that it’s okay for them to slip away now, barely detectable, like dust in the wind.

So whether you’ve read the book or not, check out Kev’s review, and be sure to read all three parts!