This one got to us like no other book we've read this year.....a beautifully written tale of inherent good struggling and triumphing over bottomless evil. Before we even reach the end of this review, we'll say it right now......seek this one out without any delay.....
Taking place in rural New Hampshire, it's a grown woman, Marjorie Richards, retelling the story of her iron-willed survival of a horrific adolescence. Her parents, two mean-spirited backwoods outcasts, regularly subject 17 year old Marjorie to physical abuse and humiliation. Like her parents, Marjorie has fallen into using their incomprehensible speech pattern.....a bastardization of English in which reversed nouns and verbs are further convoluted with excess prepositions, hence the ridicule Marjorie endures from classmates, dubbing her the 'talk funny' girl.
When she's ordered by her parents to find employment to help support them, she finds work as an apprentice to a shy young man who's building a stone cathedral on the site of a burned out church. Blossoming under his tutelage, she learns the craft of stonework and finds the courage she needs to break out of the cruel yoke of her parents' oppression......which also includes brutal, ritual beatings in the so-called 'church' her parents attend, overseen by a bible-thumping sadist.
As if the misery inflicted on her by her family isn't enough, the constant threat of abduction and murder hover over Marjorie......from a serial killer of young girls still at large.....
Author Merullo uses the narrative of the grown Marjorie to view these events, both heartwarming and scary, with an adult's distanced perception.....with even a measure of insightful compassion for the heinous mother and father. The story's conclusion is everything you thought it might be.......a satisfying, yet sadly bittersweet mixture of all the book's swirling elements.... bloody violence, tragedy and ultimate self-discovery. Fair warning: the final pages will keep you up all night until you finish them.....
We're all done talking up "The Talk Funny Girl".....time for you wonderful BQ visitors to please, by all means, check it out, give it a read......5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS.
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