Smith never moralizes in Marilou is Everywhere; she understands the flaws that make everyone — especially those who have been beaten down the world — human. And that's indicative of Smith's compassion and generosity as a writer. She never condescends to the characters in the novel, never asks her readers to pity them. While many books set in rural America descend into poverty porn, Smith keeps the humanity of the characters in sharp focus, showing a real love ... Smith does a beautiful job articulating this desire that Cindy has, and explaining why she finds herself unable to stop searching for it, even as her life — and Bernadette's — slowly fall apart ... a novel of stunning emotional intelligence, and Cindy an unforgettable character, but it's Smith's writing that's the real star of the book. Her language is hypnotic and enchanting, with lines that read like poetry ... Nearly every page of the novel features a breathtaking turn of phrase; the book is almost otherworldly in its beauty and power.
... strange and powerful ... Smith’s eye doesn’t accost; it considers. That Smith is also a poet comes as no surprise. Her prose — densely though never overly descriptive, rich and bursting, verdantly Appalachian — puts you vividly in this world, where the banal is rendered strangely and tenderly. This is a book interested in people not just unglamorous, but overlooked. It’s a book brimming with longing, with heartbreak. It’s a coming-of-age by coming into somebody else ... the novel is about more than just adolescent angst, a young girl’s longing to be somewhere else, someone else. Its universality lies in its generosity — its empathy for every character within it, regardless of his or her decisions, no matter how flawed. There is compassion for questionable actions rooted in longing. Reduced to those longings, are any of us so dissimilar?
It’s a compelling premise for a suspenseful novel, and short chapters keep the story moving, as Cindy makes a choice that harms others. But Smith isn’t solely interested in plot; she’s a poet as well as a fiction writer, and her interest in language shows ... Marilou Is Everywhere’s language mixes the inventive with the plain, which adds another dimension to the first-person narration, making Cindy’s lonely world more vivid. Smith handles the darkness in the novel (rural poverty, sexual abuse, alcoholism, drug use, neglect) with a light touch, offering plenty of humor in Cindy’s narration. The story comes to a lovely conclusion, allowing Cindy and the novel’s other characters some redemption ... Smith is a writer to watch.
... stunningly evocative ... In Smith’s hands, Cindy’s acute observations capture the classism and casual racism of their poor town ... At times, the narrative veers into more sophisticated territory, stretching the credibility of Cindy as a narrator ... This is more the vocabulary of Smith, a poet as well as a novelist, than that of the then still self-educating Cindy. However, such poetic phrasings work, perhaps because sound as well as meaning contribute so much to a depiction of poverty and insularity that wouldn’t be out of place in the books of Laurel Groff or Tim Gautreaux. Or perhaps the author is hinting at a broader future for Cindy.
Marilou Is Everywhere has drama and poignancy, but its other source of delight is Smith's stunning prose. Beautiful phrasings or original formulations glint on the page ... Sometimes that lyricism glints too much, the result of which is dazzle over development. But when Smith gets the balance right, we find ourselves swept along while marveling at a unique new voice.
Given that the driving plot point of Marilou Is Everywhere is a teenage girl lying to a mentally ill woman about her missing daughter, it would be easy to make Cindy a villain. Yet, Ms. Smith writes with such empathy for her protagonist that Cindy becomes a much more tragic figure — a young girl desperate for love and nurturing who is so alienated from the world around her that she’s willing to become an entirely different person to escape it ... The author’s sensitivity also shines in her description of living in poverty in Western Pennsylvania ... Marilou Is Everywhere is a breathtakingly empathetic portrayal of a young woman in crisis, and an astonishingly assured debut. With lyrical precision, Ms. Smith writes Cindy with humanity and kindness, bringing her to vivid life.
... a mysterious and strangely exciting debut. Smith is a poet, and writes in sensory-driven, soul-tapping prose ... Despite her isolation, professed ignorance, and desire to self-annihilate, bright and brave narrator Cindy understands much of the world, its hardships and moral quandaries, and the startling lack of guarantees that come with being born.
... hauntingly gorgeous ... Smith, who never insults her characters by pitying them, captures this unstable world with matter-of-fact poetry, spare and sensual and surprisingly funny ... Bleak and vivid; Smith’s characters are as rich as her prose.
Smith’s rural world is brought to life with precise and devastating descriptions of poverty and neglect, though sometimes the lyricism of the prose doesn’t gel. Still, fans of Gabriel Tallent’s My Absolute Darling will appreciate Cindy’s toughened point of view and Smith’s close attention to the details of rural Appalachian life. This is a promising debut.
