Sarah Manguso

"For Ruthie, the frozen, snow-padded town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. But this is no picturesque New England. Once "home of the bean and the cod, where Lowells speak only to Cabots, and Cabots speak only to God," by the 1980s it is an unforgiving place, awash with secrets. Very Cold People tells Ruthie's story, through her eyes: from the shame handed down through her Italian and Jewish immigrant forebears and indomitable mother, to the violences and silences endured by each of her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last. For Ruthie, Waitsfield is a place to get out of--and a girl like her would be lucky to get out alive"--

A Novel

Very Cold People

Patrick Book

Cecilia

Zoe McKenna

I received a copy of this book from Penguin Random House and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Ruthie, a young child at the novel’s opening, feels passionately unmoored in Waitsfield. The cold, New England landscape seems completely inhabitable for herself and her family. As the story continues, and Ruth ages into a young woman, it becomes clear that personal, political, and historical narratives of dis-ease convene to make Waitsfield a place to escape, or die trying. 

In beginning this book, I think there is the temptation to dismiss it as listless, or even confused. The sense of time and trajectory in this novel is unlike many I’ve encountered: not-quite-linear, but not completely atypical, either. 

Our child narrator, Ruthie, rescues this uncertain beginning. As a reader, I usually steer clear of child narrators for the ways in which plots tend to become juvenile, or condescending. This is never the case with Very Cold People. Ruthie is a brilliant and perceptive narrator from the get-go, and her bizarre and brutal observations of her family and those around her make the pages of this story come alive. As she suffers embarrassment, shame, guilt, joy, and sadness, her readers emote alongside her. 

The writing is fast paced and snappy. While the subject matter persists in the mind (this is a dark book about abuse and sexual assault, amongst other troubling topics), the syntax of this novel is slim, sleek, and designed to push you forward. The result is a whirlwind, but in a very quiet way. While many small town stories end in chaos, Manguso concludes this novel with barely a whisper. Yet, it lingers, all the same.

Very Cold People A Novel

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