Dear Searching,
A
book you might like/read/find beautiful is Things in Nature Merely Grow by
Yiyun Li. Notice my ‘might.’ I worry about making suggestions to you- because who died and left me in charge?- as my friend’s mother* used to say.
Things in Nature Merely Grow is a book about suicide and being a mother. There was a joke, around looking for books for 8, 10, 12 year olds when my son was that age: Book has an award; qualifying question: Does the dog die? I can tell you right now that the dog dies like you wouldn't believe. I still think you should** read it.
Two more books, which I also liked, even loved,
but with a little more distance; with a measure of bleakness & sorrow: Bastard Out of Carolina ( Dorothy Allison)
and Member of the Wedding (Carson McCullers). Dogs die and so does hope in these two, but yeah, I still think you should read them. The truth has a beauty no matter how sad.
*My friend's Mom was named Yvonne. An amazing woman, really; much older than the usual 13 year old's mother. She and I got along like a house on fire (peculiarly, all old people liked me in my early teens). Yvonne was a classic alcoholic who chain smoked . Which didn’t daunt me, because outside of my parents, all my relatives were drunks, and most of them smoked. She was a connoisseur of country music (when that category meant Tammy Wynette and Waylon Jennings), and a font of phrases like ‘better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.’ She also loved to say; and this one might be my favorite: Let’s not, and say we did. I imagined, in my very rural and insulated childhood, that everyone’s mother had phrases like these, and that I would just be collecting more and more of them as life went on; but no, no one else’s mother talked like that, and I have only the handful of phrases to get me through the age she must have been when I knew her.
** But, don't read Bridge to Terabithia, Or do. because adults love this book. If you want a book where the dog doesn't die, try Pinky Pye. Or the very lovely Raising Hare.
