Coming-of-age novel: My Sore Hush-a-Bye by @RenataFBarcelos
My Sore Hush-a-Bye
Written by Renata F. BarcelosFollow @RenataFBarcelos
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Synopsis
Camille is a young girl stuck in the past. Classic TV shows, old music, and dresses that never made it into the 21st century.
After her mother left a puzzling note leaving her in the care of Uncle Bob, she had a rough go of it, not wanting to conform to his rigorous rules and this new life. But she learned. She learned to love and accept her sheltered life.
That all starts to change when Camille finally goes to public school once she reaches her teenage years. She meets a friend who mysteriously disappears. She has suspicions that Uncle Bob may not be the perfect man she once thought. She starts thinking about her mother.
Most important of all, she begins to grow up, and that is what changes everything…
Reviews from Amazon
This is a book that can be read on several levels. The writing, simple, direct, fast-paced, is cleverly pitched throughout to represent the internal musings of a young girl. On the surface, the naive, unsophisticated retrospections of this simple black girl are mundane in their very ordinariness. But lurking below the simple tale of Camille's life with Uncle Bob is a burgeoning foreboding that is never explicit but hurtles inevitably towards an unspeakable truth.
Such is the writer's skill that, despite the fact that we are seeing the victim's existence through her own rose-tinted viewpoint, the reader remains in constant dread that explicit and unsavoury details must inevitably present themselves. There are places in the book where I would rather not have continued reading for fear of what might transpire but throughout Barcelos relies solely, and with great effect, on the power of suggestion.
Such is the writer's skill that, despite the fact that we are seeing the victim's existence through her own rose-tinted viewpoint, the reader remains in constant dread that explicit and unsavoury details must inevitably present themselves. There are places in the book where I would rather not have continued reading for fear of what might transpire but throughout Barcelos relies solely, and with great effect, on the power of suggestion.
Renata really has rare writing talents. This book made me cry, I loved that it was told from the girls point of view so that you could really see how everything affected her. You could really grasp just how deeply she was victimized, how she couldn't even like a normal human being with think because of the things that had been done to her. Almost like Stockholm's syndrome but until the end, she didn't know she was the victim. It was such a sad story. But unfortunately things like this happen more often than we'd like and this book gave us insight into the damage it causes in the victim's mind.
Hopefully Camille's story can help other people that have been victimized realize that they can move on. They can recover and be okay and I hope that this book really opens people eyes to see what really is going on outside and to pay attention to the signs because there are so many children out there that need help and don't get it because people do not know what to look for.
Hopefully Camille's story can help other people that have been victimized realize that they can move on. They can recover and be okay and I hope that this book really opens people eyes to see what really is going on outside and to pay attention to the signs because there are so many children out there that need help and don't get it because people do not know what to look for.
