WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 51Review_FICTION
unconscious. Twelve years later, Rose tracks
down Lacie in New York City, where they
both live. Rose is working on a novel about
her youth and making ends meet as an SAT
tutor, a job she lands after fudging her
qualifications. Lacie is working as a graphic
artist and dating Ian, a painter. Rose worms
her way into sharing Lacie’s apartment, and
soon, in the best horror movie tradition,
is costuming herself in Lacie’s clothes,
throwing herself at Ian, and generally
taking possession of Lacie’s life, with pre-
dictably disastrous consequences. A classic
unreliable narrator, Rose glibly explains
away even her most horrific actions.
McCarthy’s pitch-dark tone extends out-
ward from her narrator to the rest of the cast
of characters, all motivated by self-interest
and most even less self-aware than Rose.
This is a deliciously incisive tale. (June)
Exciting Times
Naoise Dolan. Ecco, $27.99 (256p) ISBN 978-
0-06-296874-6
In Dolan’s wry, tender debut, a Dubliner
in Hong Kong navigates her love life and
sexuality. Ava, 22, has a murky friendship
with London-born and Oxford-educated
banker Julian, in his late 20s, whom she’d
met at a bar during her first month in
Hong Kong, where she teaches English.
They treat each other with ironic regard,
speaking mostly in quips about his privi-
lege and their mutual maybe-attraction.
Ava moves into his flat, and they soon start
sleeping together. The novel picks up speed
after Julian travels to London for work and
Ava meets Edith Zhang, who is both dif-
ferent from Julian in many ways—stylish,
female, a Hong Kong local—and similar—
boarding school, Cambridge, a well-off
family. On Ava’s 23rd birthday, Edith kisses
her, and they fall headlong into an earnest,
garrulous, and secret love, as Edith isn’t out
to her family. When Julian writes to say he
will be returning in a month, Ava, who
hasn’t disclosed the true nature of her and
Julian’s relationship to Edith, must decide
what she really wants. Dolan starts slowly,
but gradually the ironic distancing of Ava’s
narration is pierced by questions from Ava’s
students and her transformative relation-
ship with Edith. Dolan’s smart, brisk debut
works as charming comedy of manners,
though it packs less of a punch when it
comes to class consciousness. (June)
The bond between Reney, and her
mother, Justine, is central to Crooked
Hallelujah. How does this speak to the
book’s themes concerning the cycle of
bad relationships and occasional co-
dependency between mothers and
their daughters, and the resilience of
Cherokee women?
As I work, I probably actively resist
thinking about the broader implica-
tions. But now that I’m away from the
book, I’ve thought about the way
families who grow up
really needing one
another—particularly
because of poverty, but also
perhaps other issues or
traumas—can become
closer because of that need
or trauma. Coming up in a
family of very tight-knit,
strong, stubborn Cherokee
women—fighters all of them—we
didn’t call it codependency.To me, the story of Reney and Justine
is also the story of Lula, Justine’s
mother, and Annie Mae, Reney’s
great-grandmother. They all have such
similar stories—difficult lives with
men, poverty—Reney is the first char-
acter who might escape these cycles.
So you can’t tell Justine’s story without
telling her mother’s, Lula’s, story.
You can’t tell Reney’s story without
telling her great-grandmother’s,
Annie Mae’s, story. Their lives are
inextricable from one another. And I
do think that can happen when you
grow up in poverty, wading through
generational trauma, when you grow
up needing one another in this way.Could you talk about Reney’s interest
in her Cherokee identity?
Reney faces a complicated question of
heritage and identity. She has a multi-
tribal heritage, but as she tells us,
she’s all her mother; she never cared
about who her father was. Then again,
as a teenager she notices similarities
between herself and her biological
Choctaw father. As an adult who has
made her way to college, Reney calls
Justine asking questions, wanting to
learn about their Cherokee
heritage. Justine scoffs at
the idea that she has any-
thing worthy of sharing
but does her best. However,
Reney never even asks any
questions about her
Choctaw heritage. She
understands that she can’t
because of her allegiance
to her mom, but I suspect that as time
goes on she will.Do you have a sense of the story you
want to tell when you set down to write?
For me, everything springs from the
characters and the language. I’ve
worked with these characters for so long
that I eventually had a pretty good
sense of them. As I work and rework the
language, that’s where I find movement
and eventually, hopefully, a plot. Stuff
has a way of happening if you stick
with it long enough—you look up and
someone has pulled out a shotgun, or,
hey, there’s a tornado! Then you can go
back and shape what you stumbled
upon. But I have to have the language
right to move on and discover the story.
—Erika Wurth[Q&A]
PW Talks with Kelli Jo Ford
Mama Tried
In Ford’s Crooked Hallelujah (Grove, May; reviewed on p. 50), a young
Cherokee woman struggles to overcome a generational cycle of broken
families while remaining close to her mother.© val ford hancock