The voice that relates this life seems too mature for the image we get on the page. Perhaps this is the adult Amber Young, looking back on a life that seemed too gritty yet too glittery to be real. She goes to a talent show, gets the attention of an agent and, months later, she’s going to auditions.
The downward spiral begins. Lured with the promise of stardom, she starts missing classes and turning homework in late, when she turns it in at all. She is unwilling audience for her mother and brother’s tremendous fights. She misses an absentee father.
The language is plain for the most part, stripped of fancy. But then a sentence, paragraph or phrase leaps out and grabs you by the throat, pulling the reader into the story. We are there when she is humiliated at a game of Spin the Bottle. We commiserate when an Easy Bake Oven commercial goes to another girl. We cringe with her when she shields herself from her brother’s sexual romps with girls.
This is powerful writing, evocative and moving. Amber Young, with her stripper’s name (which she acknowledges), is determined to succeed because she wants to be loved and that desperation will be her making and her undoing.
The downward spiral begins. Lured with the promise of stardom, she starts missing classes and turning homework in late, when she turns it in at all. She is unwilling audience for her mother and brother’s tremendous fights. She misses an absentee father.
The language is plain for the most part, stripped of fancy. But then a sentence, paragraph or phrase leaps out and grabs you by the throat, pulling the reader into the story. We are there when she is humiliated at a game of Spin the Bottle. We commiserate when an Easy Bake Oven commercial goes to another girl. We cringe with her when she shields herself from her brother’s sexual romps with girls.
This is powerful writing, evocative and moving. Amber Young, with her stripper’s name (which she acknowledges), is determined to succeed because she wants to be loved and that desperation will be her making and her undoing.