Family by Micol Ostow
My rating: 2/5 cats
dear book, WHY ARE YOU POETRY??
yeah, this one is all on me. some wise customer had abandoned this book on one of my shelves at the store, and as i was walking it over the the resort cart, i read the flap, and i said to myself, “teen fiction about charles manson?? from a manson girl’s perspective?? sign me up!!”
however.
it is not teen fiction about charles manson.
it is teen poetry about charles manson.
and even the most casual glance through the pages would have told me that. but i got ahead of myself. and that is what happened. who would write poetry about charles manson?? teenagers and lunatics.
why why why?? i honestly do not know what makes people write novels in verse. what is the point? it just seems lazy to me. because these aren’t villanelles, here.
these are just
sentences
broken up to demonstrate
the fractured nature
of a personality enmeshed in
cult dynamics
maybe
or maybe this just takes up more space
so less has to
actually
be
written.
but it is infuriating! nothing is more boring than listening to the ramblings of someone who has been brainwashed. unless it is reading their bad poetry about it. so much repetition and nonsense. and yet it doesn’t ring true—the end is just absurd. this is not any manson girl i know. because, yes, i went through a manson family fascination in my youth. not to the extent of joining a cult, but certainly to try to understand how anyone could have followed along with any of it, hippie dropouts or no, plentiful drugs or no, addictive charisma or no.
this is ouisch:
she was my favorite manson girl.
and even though my true-crime days are long behind me, i would have loved to have read a gritty teen fiction story that realistically depicted what it must have been like to have been in the head of someone who allowed themselves to get to the point where their own desires had been absorbed into someone else’s will. you know, like twilight. but with more rich people killin’.
but dear god, not in poetry.
never in poetry.
Sold was bad enough—why could that story not be told straight? why use gimmicks? and i am not anti-poetry. poetry is fine. there is just no need to tell a prolonged narrative in poetry; you’re not homer, ftlog.
so maybe this book is great for some people, but i felt betrayed, even though it was my own damn fault.
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