Thursday, May 23, 2013

What is Julie Sarkissian reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Julie Sarkissian, author of Dear Lucy.

Her entry begins:
Give Sorrow Words: Maryse Holders Letters From Mexico

Yikes! This book – an epistolary journal of a young American woman’s degrading sexual affairs in Mexico – is almost too painful to read but just too compelling to put down. Witnessing in such gory detail a smart, educated and talented woman subject herself to being used and abused by man after man is excruciating, but her honesty binds you to her suffering in such a way that feels like to turn away from her pain would be to...[read on]
About Dear Lucy, from the publisher:
I go down the stairs quiet like I am something without any weight. I open the door in the dark and the cold sucks my skin towards it. It is the morning but there is no sun yet, just white light around the edges. It is the time to get the eggs. Time for my best thing. The eggs they shine with their white and I do not need the light to find them. The foxes need no light either. I am a little like the fox, he is a little like me.

Lucy is a young woman with an uncommon voice and an unusual way of looking at the world. She doesn’t understand why her mother has sent her to live with old Mister and Missus on their farm, but she knows she must never leave or her mother won’t be able to find her again.

Also living at the farm is a pregnant teenager named Samantha who tells conflicting stories about her past and quickly becomes Lucy’s only friend. When Samantha gives birth and her baby disappears, Lucy arms herself with Samantha’s diary—as well as a pet chicken named Jennifer—and embarks on a dangerous and exhilarating journey to reunite mother and child. With Dear Lucy, Julie Sarkissian has created an unforgettable new heroine of contemporary fiction whose original voice, exuberance, and bravery linger long after the final page.
Learn more about the book and author at Julie Sarkissian's website.

The Page 69 Test: Dear Lucy.

Writers Read: Julie Sarkissian.

--Marshal Zeringue