Spilling Clarence

I absolutely love this book. It is very much set in the emotional, internal conflicts of the characters, and there were many. I enjoyed switching back and forth between all of their lives, sometimes lingering one one character's story longer than another's, just like flipping through the channels on TV. They were glimpses, snapshots of a life. I love this book because Anne Ursu captures the innermost thoughts and feelings of every single character perfectly. I would be stumped trying to describe some of these things, but she describes each and every one as if she had been there, experiencing the same thing her characters experienced. I also love the way she writes. When I started this novel, I was a bit overwhelmed. Her writing style was unlike anything I've ever stumbled upon before. She uses words I had never heard of before, and I'm not new to this whole reading thing either. She uses these ( ) frequently to insert little extras or footnotes about the characters, which I would have been terrified to do in my own writing, and she refers to the town of Clarence as a single unit, as if it were a character in and of itself. This book is just so unique in so many different way. I loved reading it, and I'm almost sad that it had to end. I wanted to see more than just snapshots of the pasts and little excerpts from their present. I wanted to continued watching little Sophia grow up, I wanted to know if Madeline and Calvin ever finish their story, I wanted to follow Susannah through medical school, and I wanted to watch her find her way back to Todd.