Mary Anna King's Bastards
King has been making the rounds of blogs I like to promote this memoir (cf this piece on The Toast), and though I don't read a lot of non-fiction, her writing and the description of this book were both pretty intriguing. King grew up in a poor and complicated family, where she was the second oldest of seven (the younger ones also all girls), and where her four youngest sisters were all given up for adoption, not knowing the older siblings existed. But King knew they would come looking eventually, and wanted to be ready for them. The writing here is just excellent--the story moves along really quickly, and I loved King's descriptions of the various reunions, even if a lot of questions go unanswered. But it's almost like everything else besides the siblings is extraneous--this works fine just as it is. Really tender and also, at times, really funny. A/A-.
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