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Best of 2009 Blog Challenge Day 4
Dec. 4th, 2009 06:20 pmDecember 4 Book. What book - fiction or non - touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?
I was trying to remember what I read this year...there were a few things. For one, I started Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin" in December of last year but I think I finished it in January of this year...I got it out of the public library and thought it was excellent.
Also, I am having a total memory lapse about a book that I read THIS SUMMER and really liked, yet cannot remember the title or author, and googling doesn't seem to help. I remember the plot very well, though, so hopefully someone can remind me what this book is. It is a really dark coming-of-age story about a girl growing up on a tiny island, where her father is a prison warden, and her mother is a frustrated ambitious perfectionist, who has been bleaching the girl's hair since she was six weeks old. The girl has a granmother in Los Angeles, who sends her movie magazines, and has exciting stories about Hollywood in the 1930s. The narrative goes back and forth between the story of this teenage girl on the island, and the story of the grandmother, when she was young, the daughter of a migrant refugee from Mexico, growing up in Los Angeles, and falling into the brothel industry around Hollywood movie sets. I gave it to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
khalinche to read, and I don't think she liked it as much as I did (but maybe she remembers it?)--I thought it had its problems, and was a bit uneven, especially in its discourse about sex work, but overall I thought it was partly an excellent book about structures of exploitation, partly an anti-fairy-tale, partly the darkest sort of satire. It has a kind of chick-lit cover to it, but was most definitely not chick lit. I got it at this charity thrift store in Leeds, and read most of it there, finishing it on the train to London.
I was trying to remember what I read this year...there were a few things. For one, I started Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin" in December of last year but I think I finished it in January of this year...I got it out of the public library and thought it was excellent.
Also, I am having a total memory lapse about a book that I read THIS SUMMER and really liked, yet cannot remember the title or author, and googling doesn't seem to help. I remember the plot very well, though, so hopefully someone can remind me what this book is. It is a really dark coming-of-age story about a girl growing up on a tiny island, where her father is a prison warden, and her mother is a frustrated ambitious perfectionist, who has been bleaching the girl's hair since she was six weeks old. The girl has a granmother in Los Angeles, who sends her movie magazines, and has exciting stories about Hollywood in the 1930s. The narrative goes back and forth between the story of this teenage girl on the island, and the story of the grandmother, when she was young, the daughter of a migrant refugee from Mexico, growing up in Los Angeles, and falling into the brothel industry around Hollywood movie sets. I gave it to
khalinche to read, and I don't think she liked it as much as I did (but maybe she remembers it?)--I thought it had its problems, and was a bit uneven, especially in its discourse about sex work, but overall I thought it was partly an excellent book about structures of exploitation, partly an anti-fairy-tale, partly the darkest sort of satire. It has a kind of chick-lit cover to it, but was most definitely not chick lit. I got it at this charity thrift store in Leeds, and read most of it there, finishing it on the train to London.
