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melannrosenthal 's review for:
Sugar Run
by Mesha Maren
The darkness shrieks like a guitar whine, slow and sultry until the loudness overtakes everything else that is expertly revealed. The prose is mind-blowing, turning over and over, not one word too many, opening up every aspect and emotion of these women’s lives. The story itself is a heady mix of Orange is the New Black, [b:Jar of Hearts|36315374|Jar of Hearts|Jennifer Hillier|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1508949170s/36315374.jpg|57988547], and [b:The Wildlands|36711026|The Wildlands|Abby Geni|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1523560178s/36711026.jpg|58507798], touched with A Star is Born (2018), shaken and dropped into super-small-town, drug-riddled America. This book is all too timely, displaying how wisely craft can be used to get right to the heart, of both the reader and the characters, as the words twist the knife of misery and quiet surprise.
The chapters flit between the pasts and melded present of Miranda, an on/off drug addict, mother of 3, and estranged wife of washed up musician, Lee Golden- and Jodi, a recently released convict, thrown into jail as a minor where she stayed for 18 years. Ever so slowly the truth of what led Jodi to kill in 1989 is shown, how her involvement with Paula ruined her, and how she hides it from Miranda, her new lover, will likely lead to the demise of their fresh relationship as well.
Her first act on parole is to find Paula's younger brother Ricky, and save him, finally, from the abusive household the pair had been originally saving for in the first place nearly 20 years before. Next she will find a lawyer to help her figure out how to settle the tax disputes over her grandmother's land in the West Virginia hills so that she and Ricky and Miranda and her brood of boys can have a safe place to escape to. Before they can settle in though, Jodi has to confront her new reality of being unable to even get a job at Walmart due to her record, and likely rely on her homophobic drug dealing brother just to stay afloat.
Though there are a handful of shocking situations Jodi and the others get into, even they are simultaneously quiet and loud, subtle but scary, and shouldn't they be as, despite the persistent threat of either prison (or death) hover over their heads, they're going to do whatever they can to stay together and stay alive on that mountain, on Jodi's family's land, somewhere between sober and inebriated, somewhere far from stability or happiness. Maren is a beast with words and I can't wait to see what else she produces.
The chapters flit between the pasts and melded present of Miranda, an on/off drug addict, mother of 3, and estranged wife of washed up musician, Lee Golden- and Jodi, a recently released convict, thrown into jail as a minor where she stayed for 18 years. Ever so slowly the truth of what led Jodi to kill in 1989 is shown, how her involvement with Paula ruined her, and how she hides it from Miranda, her new lover, will likely lead to the demise of their fresh relationship as well.
Her first act on parole is to find Paula's younger brother Ricky, and save him, finally, from the abusive household the pair had been originally saving for in the first place nearly 20 years before. Next she will find a lawyer to help her figure out how to settle the tax disputes over her grandmother's land in the West Virginia hills so that she and Ricky and Miranda and her brood of boys can have a safe place to escape to. Before they can settle in though, Jodi has to confront her new reality of being unable to even get a job at Walmart due to her record, and likely rely on her homophobic drug dealing brother just to stay afloat.
Though there are a handful of shocking situations Jodi and the others get into, even they are simultaneously quiet and loud, subtle but scary, and shouldn't they be as, despite the persistent threat of either prison (or death) hover over their heads, they're going to do whatever they can to stay together and stay alive on that mountain, on Jodi's family's land, somewhere between sober and inebriated, somewhere far from stability or happiness. Maren is a beast with words and I can't wait to see what else she produces.