Lauded by critics and authors for her heartbreakingly real heroines, Laura Wiess brings readers another devastating tale of betrayal and redemption rich with the raw emotion that made Such a Pretty Girl a classic.
How can you make someone love you when they won’t?
And what if that person happens to be your mother?
Sayre Bellavia grew up knowing she was a mistake: unplanned and unwanted. At five months shy of eighteen, she’s become an expert in loneliness, heartache, and neglect. Her whole life she’s been cursed, used, and left behind. Swallowed a thousand tears and ignored a thousand deliberate cruelties. Sayre’s stuck by her mother through hell, tried to help her, be near her, be important to her even as her mother slipped away into a violent haze of addiction, destroying the only chance Sayre ever had for a real family.
Now her mother is lying in a hospital bed, near death, ravaged by her own destructive behavior. And as Sayre fights her way to her mother’s bedside, she is terrified but determined to get the answer to a question no one should ever have to ask: Did my mother ever really love me? And what will Sayre do if the answer is yes?
This story hit me hard. There were times in this book that I had to put it down and walk away. I received this in the mail about a week ago and it has taken me that long to get through it. Not because it was a bad book. On the contrary, Laura Wiess has done it again by creating a startlingly honest novel about something people know happens but choose to ignore. I am sure we have all seen the kid in school with the dirty clothes who seems to never bathe and most people, at least at my old school, blamed the kid for the way they appeared. But this story brings up the point that it's not the child's choice to live that way. You have no idea what goes on behind closed doors. In this story the main character, Sayre has lived with her mother and her mother's addictions her whole life. Her mother is an alcoholic and has been addicted to meth and is now addicted to pain pills. She has never taken care of Sayre, and spends every cent they have on her addictions. To say this girl had an awful life is not even the half of it. At one point her mother's best friend tried to kill her with a hammer. A neighbor called the police and her mother was arrested but as soon as her mother was released, Sayre was made to live with her again. That's one of the most disturbing thing about this story. Though no one knew everything that was going on, people knew enough and yet they never did anything to stop it. Now, Sayre is 17 and her mother is in the hospital dying of liver failure. Sayre is determined that before her mother dies to find out the truth once and for all. A question no child should ever have to ask. Did my mother ever love me? This book is haunting. For me on personal levels. My own mother was an addict. She gave me up and I lived with my grandparents and then after they fell ill, I moved in with distant cousins. But reading this book was like reading the way my life could have turned out. The fact that things like this happen, that there are children out there living a life close to how Sayre lives is heartbreaking. There is not one person out there that can read this story and not be haunted by it. All in all, a breathtaking, haunting, amazing story. Laura Wiess has done it again.
