Billie Livingstone has done an absolutely masterful job of
revealing a world in which everyone is broken and no one is
irredeemable. Her characters are so true, and so troubled, that the
book is often painful to read. It is impossible to be a thinking
person and not be reminded, on every dreadful, dark page, that the
line between that world and our own is as thin as a drinking
problem or falling in love with the wrong man once too many times.
At the same time, there is hope -- not much, but a thin wisp of it
that makes the book impossible to put down once begun. And there is
love, compelling evidence that a mother's love is perhaps the most
trancendent aspect of the powerful and wondrous human spirit.
Without judgement, without a shred of dramatics or self-pity, Ms.
Livingstone follows her characters through days so dreary and
dangerous that we wonder not even if they will survive, but if
there is a point. Just when we have given up on their behalf,
surrendered, joy is delivered as a pizza with extra cheese ... and
we remember why life is worth living even in the hardest
moments.
Like life itself, this story is both painful and worth showing up
for.