If I had read War and Peace at my normal reading speed, I would have skimmed over these smaller moments. I would have missed how Tolstoy uses repetition to show the chaos of battle. I would have missed the dirt crumbling from a horse’s hoof. I would have missed the “smell of fading leaves and dogs.” I very well might have never finished the book, giving up along the way, feeling as though it might never end, not allowing myself the pleasure of how the small moments accrue to create the whole. I would never have learned that I preferred the battles to the balls.
The Reformatory is Due's attempt to piece together the story of a family member never spoken of, but it's also much more than that. This is a novel that isn't afraid to look at the past and expose the good and the bad, the heartwarming and the harrowing, the real and the lies that were told by those in power.
With a clear-eyed blend of family stresses and furtive schemes, the author produces a classic whodunit and embraces the strength that is often nurtured among multiple generations of women. Celebrate Simon’s success and her mother’s survival.
Strip Tees is perhaps the first book on the American Apparel era. An echt-early-2000s coming-of-age cautionary tale no doubt positioned for literary adaptation. You can practically hear the Netflix POV narration when Flannery describes AA’s trademark Lolitafied ads as “real and intimate, like a snapshot you'd take with your best girlfriends […] practicing the ropes of sexiness, just getting a feel for it […] eager, wanting to please.” Uffie’s probably already cashed her royalty checks.