Ann S. Epstein Writer

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Baby Darlin’: A Graphic Memoir by Alycia Vreeland (Rated 5) – Raw and Righteous. Baby Darlin’ (BD) grows up in a house full of shit. Literally and figuratively. BD wants to love, to be loved, but is betrayed time and again by those she trusts. Her mother is sick in the head. Papa is kind and funny, but he isn’t around. Grandpa is interesting. He is a painter and BD wants to be a painter too. But Grandpa is also crazy. Grandma is a devout Catholic who shames BD. Only BD’s older cousin, Willy, loves her. She will do whatever he tells her, especially drink. It tastes awful, so she washes it down with root beer. And alcohol makes BD feel great, even if it also makes her throw up. BD also has a secret friend, Ayne de Blu, who “disappears” BD’s body when Pig, who is even grosser than his name, assaults her. Ayne tells BD everything will be OK. But everything is not OK. BD’s drinking becomes uncontrollable. The worst: She loses her son. Things get better when BD meets Jon, the love of her life. He’s a drug addict trying to kick his habit; she’s an alcoholic trying to stay sober. BD suffers unbearable losses: her cousin, her son, her mother, and then Jon. How will she survive? Alone? But she is not alone. BD discovers a Higher Power. But, to this reviewer, the power also resides within BD herself, in the woman named Alycia Vreeland. Telling her saga, Vreeland outs the truth of an abused child in graphic language and painful pictures. As writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Vreeland’s courage writing this unrelentingly honest memoir. BD, her alter-ego, does not mince words. She makes readers cringe. We should. She makes us cry. We should. BD provokes outrage. Bravo for her. Listen to her voice; see her in these bold images. Read Baby Darlin’ with a strong stomach and a big heart. Surrender to the power of this amazing book.

A graphic memoir of child abuse

Why writers read: “Books are people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.” – E. B. White

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Fire Exit by Morgan Talty (Rated 5) – Identity Crises. Fire Exit by Morgan Talty argues that we are all entitled to know our past, even if the truth is disorienting. Learning the whole story may fill in missing parts or provoke unasked questions. In Fire Exit, the issue is especially fraught because it deals with identity, namely the right to claim Native American identity if, lurking unbeknownst to a child raised as a full Indian, is a father’s non-native identity. Charles, the protagonist, was raised on the Penobscot reservation by his non-native mother and Indian stepfather with full knowledge of his story. He feels his daughter, conceived with his high school Penobscot girlfriend and now fully grown, is entitled to hers. The girl’s mother and indigenous husband, who raised the girl as his own, object. Entangled in Charles’s urge to tell his daughter her blood story is that his own mother’s memory is growing porous with Alzheimer’s. Moreover, he’s plagued by guilt that preoccupation with the girls’ birth kept him from preventing his stepfather’s death decades earlier. Fire Exit is replete with grief, remorse, mental illness, alcoholism, and death. Yet, the novel is not wholly bleak and morbid. On the contrary, Talty’s ineradicable faith in filial devotion and commitment to personal history is ultimately uplifting. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire his refusal to shy away from difficult subjects with debatable answers. Fire Exit will make readers question their own stories. Warning: The choice not to know the truth comes at a price.

The benefits and costs of unknown identity

Why writers read: “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham

My Goodreads and Amazon review of The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas (Rated 3) – Bumpless. The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas is a quiet book about the small pleasures of a self-contained couple. Asya and her partner Manu, each from different countries and living in yet a third country, are outsiders content to dwell inside their own relationship. They’ve even invented a tribal name and private language. Although they work — she as a documentary film maker, he at an unspecified nonprofit — there’s no passion behind their labors. Friends are satellites, one of whom orbits closely, but the others are props in the twosome’s routines. A plot, if one can be said to exist, is their search for a new apartment. They struggle to find one they like because they are too comfortable to imagine inhabiting a different space. Like anthropologists, Asya and Manu observe and occasionally join the action, but nothing penetrates their insular cocoon. Savas will convince some readers that a life lived this way, without conflict and drama, but also minus joy and excitement, is enough. It’s a reassuring message in a hectic world. Yet I found myself seeking more. A character-driven novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page) , I nevertheless choose to invest my characters’ lives with significant events and challenges. Savas’s flat plain felt sad and empty. I would have preferred more bumps.

The uneventful life of an insular couple

Why writers read: “If I could always read I should never feel the want of company.” – Lord Byron