What a piece of trash.

A crossroads book about living in that disconnect between the life you choose and the life that chooses you.

Marie is a damn good waitress, a half-hearted mother, and an on-again, off-again junkie who derailed off the straight and narrow when she became pregnant on the verge of attending Yale. Instead of going to college, she starts waitressing. The book chronicles a life spent in shadows of what was, what will be, and what is.

Not a bad book, but I was let down by all the hype. I wanted something spectacular to jump out and grab me besides the story. That's why only 3 1/2 stars.

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Test 1

Astounding. ( )

This was written two years before Sweetbitter (2016), another turgid novel about a floundering server in a high end restaurant. I dislike them equally because both first person narrators are young women who invite abuse due to low self-esteem or whatever, I just don't care. Marie has a daughter who she can't live with because she isn't responsible enough to care for her. So what would have happened to this child if her husband hadn't stepped in? There's no evidence of childhood abuse here, no discernible explanation for her encouraging every man she meets to mistreat her, no justification for her burning herself with hot metal objects. I supposed she's mentally ill, but she just comes off as a horrible person. "In that restaurant all of us were off. Maybe that's just what it is to be alive, you've got that broken sooty piece of something lodged inside you making you veer left." I usually am not bothered by unlikeable characters, but this one's too much for me, even with her Iowa Writers Workshop cred and bigshot blurbs.

Quotes: "Some kinds of pain make fine antidotes to others."

"Matt would sit forward in his chair to catch the invisible gazelles of wisdom leaping out of her mouth." ( )