RaveThe New York Time Book Review... gripping, unsettling ... Chrissie’s observations are immaculate, loyal to her age and her desperation ... The most moving passages of the novel come in her scrabble to endow her parents with rational kindness ... Starvation is so well captured here: the relentless, obsessive drudgery of it, \'a form of madness.\' Chrissie is fascinated and repulsed by bodies better nourished than her own. At first, this fixation feels excessive, exhausting...But as Tucker opens Chrissie’s small, sparse world, this too becomes pitiful. In other people’s flesh, she can’t help seeing food ... There’s a unique, visceral fear for children who are murderers — you know those mug shots as well as I do — and Tucker sets that against our hope for redemption ... There is misery here, but there is also a dour British humor ... By the end of the novel, the voices of Chrissie and Julia reside deep in your skull: visceral and wicked, sad and wonderful, all at the same time.
