On the night of her high school graduation, a young woman follows her older sister Debbie to Salvation, a Los Angeles bar patronized by energy healers, aspiring actors, and all-around misfits. After the two share a bag of unidentified pills, the evening turns into a haze of sensual and risky interactions--nothing unusual for two sisters bound in an incredibly toxic relationship. Our unnamed narrator has always been under the spell of the alluring and rebellious Debbie and, despite her own hesitations, she has always said yes to nights like these. That is, until Debbie disappears.
Surreal...a tender and hilarious coming-of-age story of two sisters ... A magical, dreamlike presence in a hallucinatory narrative that is also surprisingly easy to follow.
So visceral and exacting in its prose that I often found myself wanting to put a foot over its drain to avoid further confrontation of a story that felt so true it was painful to be a part of. But the narrator is too sharp and sentimental to leave clogged for too long ... A sort of slowing of a swinging pendulum: there is relief when it comes to a halt, and the lingering satisfaction we got from watching the violent swings.
Madievsky’s prose is clear and insightful ... Her fragmented self illuminates issues of mental health stigma and intergenerational and sexual trauma. With intuitive prose, Madievsky transforms the narrator’s struggle into a narrative strength.
