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Jun 26, 2017
"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." -- Sir Francis Bacon This book begins with the sentence, "My mother's a prostitute." Set in the Big Easy, this book shows that growing up there as the daughter of a woman called everything from a courtesan to a whore is far from easy for Josie. "The vibration of her humming blocks out the sound." Septys uses spare prose to paint a picture for us of this young woman who has consciously made decisions to distance herself from the life her mother is living. In an interview with the author, Josie is described as a "broken yet beautiful bird" and we see her learn to fly. We also meet a diverse cast of characters and descriptions like "his handsome had gone rotten, like fruit" bring them to life. Much like "Between Shades of Gray", we see a young woman who struggles and yet there is hope. We root for Josie in her belief that she could be something wonderful like David Copperfield. "I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child. And his name is David Copperfield." -- Charles Dickens