― Anissa Gray, The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls
“That river runs through the place where I was easier to define. The place that made me who I used to be. Althea Marie Butler-Cochran: round, dimpled face; rounding, dimpled body; smooth, light brown skin; wife; mother; daughter; sister; mighty force of nature.”
The title! The cover design! But never mind, those might have been the reasons I first noticed Anissa Gray’s debut novel but it is the powerful writing that really captured me. The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls is the story of a family dealing with crisis. Althea and Proctor were pillars of their community; they ran a popular family restaurant and were raising their two daughters. But when the novel opens, Althea and Proctor are in prison on charges of fraud. They had been skimming money from the charities they ran and they got caught. The novel alternates between a variety of voices, those of Althea and Proctor, and Althea’s sisters, Viola and Lillian as the family tries to come to terms with their new reality. At the forefront is how to help the couple’s teenage daughters cope with what is unfolding, but the novel delves deep into family connections, especially relationships between mothers and daughters, but also between siblings. Althea, Viola and Lillian also face their own demons and through her novel Gray examines heavy subjects like eating disorders, homophobia, childhood neglect and life in the prison system.
I listened to this book on audio which enhanced the experience of having the novel told through different characters’ voices because each was read by a different performer. While it deals with subject matter similar to An American Marriage, the focus of Gray’s novel isn’t so much about the dissolution of a family as it is about the attempt to hold one together. All of the characters are flawed in their own ways but each is still striving to do what they believe to be right but old family secrets have to be brought to light in order for them to find a way forward.
Gray’s novel is not what most people would categorize as “summer reading”, especially if you prefer something light and breezy at the beach, but it is an impressive debut and is well worth the read. Tomorrow I will post about The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson for something completely different. Until then, happy reading!
Little Ms Word Smith 