Thursday, August 03, 2006

Me & Emma

Me & Emma earns a 4. The subject matter is uncomfortable coming from eight year old narrator, Carrie, who is busy trying to understand the world in which she has landed. Mom is tired, worn down by the tragedies of her life. Stepfather Richard is the epitome of all shitty, abusive, alcoholic fathers who can't hold a job and blame everyone else for their problems. Younger sister Emma is Carrie's only friend, strong but naive.

Flock does an adequate job of establishing the characters of the novel, lending them a sense of authenticity so that you can almost hear the drawls in the accents of the folks in Toast, North Carolina as you read the dialogue. But the end is strangely abrupt - in one chapter all is resolved and seemingly better - ruining the pace of the book and the expectations of the reader.

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