Reading friends, help. I am fifty pages into Tender Morsels and already there's been sexual abuse, incest, two miscarriages, gang rape, and attempted infanticide.
The writing is luminous, but the story is so painfully bleak . . . do I really go on? Can someone promise that finishing this book will not rob me of my will to live?
No, it gets better, honest. The first fifty pages are the worst. There's some gore later on but basically it's all uphill after the attempted infanticide.
ReplyDeleteAnd I wish you *would* read it, b/c then I'd have someone to talk about it with!
Do stick with it! All the awful stuff in the beginning is necessary to set up something huge that happens soon in the story. Not to say that it ever becomes a "light" book, but the heaviest is behind you.
ReplyDeleteOK - I will keep trying. But if I lose my will to live, I'm blaming you two. :)
ReplyDeleteNow, see, I was going to say give up on it. The ending totally depressed me. Maybe there was some point to it that I didn't get... :(
ReplyDeleteLet us know how it goes!
Tough call. I LOVED this book, but apparently I've got a strong stomach for literary violence and suchlike. The intensity does ease up somewhat once you've passed by that initial laundry list of ickiness, though.
ReplyDeleteI have this book on hold and I have been sort of dreading reading it. Now that I've read this, I am REALLY dreading reading it. Maybe I'll skip this one...I still haven't recovered from reading Living Dead Girl...
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