Tag: childhood

The author of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine talks to Matthew McAlister about the publishing industry, narrative forms, and the nature of child stardom in the digital age.

She is knee-sick and fawning on her felt-tipped prize / for exceeding her bones in the sprinting test.

Still, I started for the parlor. I’d polished my shoes, put gel in my hair: habits my mother had always wanted me to form and I had always resisted. Walking down the street, I felt conspicuous, as though people were sniggering at my gleaming head and feet.

I was like the oracle of fatness all of a sudden.

The year we went to the Camps, my sister Leila was eighteen years old and had just begun her secret affair with Sammy.

The floor was made of dirt, the walls dark and smooth, the ceiling just high enough for us to stand upright. You could walk a quarter mile before it ended, cut off by a stone wall. And it was in this tunnel that Darcie heard the voice of her mother, who was dead.

We played Steal the Bacon / and explored our unmentionables /
behind the gazebo