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A Novel
by Sarah Elaine Smith
Book Reviewed by:Consumed by the longing for a different life, a teenager flees her family and carefully slips into another -- replacing a girl whose own sudden disappearance still haunts the town.
Fourteen-year-old Cindy and her two older brothers live in rural Pennsylvania, in a house with occasional electricity, two fierce dogs, one book, and a mother who comes and goes for months at a time. Deprived of adult supervision, the siblings rely on one another for nourishment of all kinds. As Cindy's brothers take on new responsibilities for her care, the shadow of danger looms larger and the status quo no longer seems tolerable.
So when a glamorous teen from a more affluent, cultured home goes missing, Cindy escapes her own family's poverty and slips into the missing teen's life. As Jude Vanderjohn, Cindy is suddenly surrounded by books and art, by new foods and traditions, and most important, by a startling sense of possibility. In her borrowed life she also finds herself accepting the confused love of a mother who is constitutionally incapable of grasping what has happened to her real daughter. As Cindy experiences overwhelming maternal love for the first time, she must reckon with her own deceits and, in the process, learn what it means to be a daughter, a sister, and a neighbor.
Marilou Is Everywhere is a powerful, propulsive portrait of an overlooked girl who finds for the first time that her choices matter.
Confident prose and intricate narrative structure mark Mary Lou is Everywhere as one of the most interesting first novels of this year, and its author as one of the most exciting young novelists for readers to follow...continued
Full Review
(631 words)
(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
Sarah Elaine Smith's Marilou Is Everywhere is set in Greene County, Pennsylvania, in the southwest corner of the state, bordering West Virginia. The novel vividly reflects the economic distress of the struggling communities and families that make up this county. It's a mostly rural area, with just under 39,000 residents in the last census; its largest town is the county seat of Waynesburg, population 4,200. Greene County's population peaked back in the 1950s at 45,000, and has been steadily diminishing since then, as opportunities for blue-collar employment continue to dwindle due to the ongoing decline of the once-vibrant coal industry.
As with much of West Virginia, this part of Pennsylvania was heavily reliant on coal mining for ...
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Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot
Sarah Elaine Smith has one of the most likable and delightful writing voices I have encountered recently - funny, lyrical, sexy, sad, humane, and just a total pleasure to read.
