there was something so familiar in the writing style and the way transitions were both abrupt and heavy with internal meaning, that I loved this book and didn't want it to end. It reminded me of books I used to read, when I loved to read, and the act was untainted by needing a 'cause' or a politically correct framing (except for chapter 36 which was so heavy-handed that I feel certain an editor asked for a direct link where none was warranted) For some reason Mary Gaitskills' Bad Behavior comes to mind but maybe that's because it was a book that surprised and delighted me in that surprise.

As a scientist who, as a child, took God so seriously that it was major aspect of even my playtime, I found the main character infinitely relatable. in the book her religion is something that makes her feel transcendent then foolish then ashamed. it's something concrete she can refer to to explain her distance from others. she watches her life from the outside, certain that she's the only one this happens to.

granted, she is exceptionally bright and forced into realms much earlier than most: into her church youth group at 7, adult church at almost 9, caregiver of her mother at 11. she had to endure losing her brother, the only person who she felt truly knew her, first to his mood swings over his own inability to confront his feelings about their father abandoning him, then to drugs, and finally to death. her strain with her mother is exacerbated by real neglect (sure, depression is not a choice, but that doesn't change the effect a suicide attempt brings) but it's a tension all of us have, in some way. again, I am awed by this author's deftness inside the topic:

Of course, my mother is her own person. Of course, she contains multitudes. She reacts in ways that surprise me, in part, simply because she isn't me. I forget this and relearn it anew because it's a lesson that doesn't stick, that can't, stick. I know her only as she is defined against me, in her role as my mother... When she wants for me things that I don't want for myself... I am angry that she doesn't understand me, doesn't see me as my own separate person, but that anger stems from the fact that I don't see her that way either. I want her to know what I want the same way I know it, intimately, immediately.