Review: Girlchild, by Tupelo Hassman

The title of Tupelo Hassman's first novel, Girlchild, comes from the nickname the young teenaged Rory Hendrix is given by her mother, and is a significant clue regarding the nature of Rory's existance; the facts that she is a child, and a girl, define the experiences she has in the small, poverty-stricken trailerpark that is her home to the exclusion of all else.  It is an indictment of the inevitable that her mother feels is to come.  This frank focus on unaviodable predestination, which the reader sees applied to other residents in the periphery, leads all characters down an anything but rosy path towards an ending that is simultaneously hopeful *and* hopeless. 

Hassman's style in this first effort is to allow Rory to tell her tale in first person.  This increases the reader's connection to her life as she struggles with an alcoholic barmaid mother, and the ramifications of a family history of sexual abuse dating back at least one generation.  Rory is largely a social outcast, in large part because she is inexplicably brilliant in school;  unfortunately, rather than being a road out of her environment, this actually increases the load she must carry as it distances her from her peers and even her mother, who is intellectually unable to understand what a gift her daughter has, and financially unable to aid her in her pursuit of winning the state spelling bee.   Instead, her youth and downtrodden upbringing begin to make see her potential as something that is diametrically opposed to the success of her family.  Heartbreakingly, she first sabotages and then rejects entirely her chances of scholastic achievement, pushing herself back into the spiral of loss and despair that is the trailer park, which is itself a failed Las Vegas real estate venture long-abandoned by developers.

As Rory slowly uncovers her family's abusive past, she must deal with her own experience at the hands of a local pervert, the father of her babysitter, who offers Rory up in an attempt to escape her own prison.  While the situation is eventually resolved, somewhat satisfactorily, by cosmic justice, the entire novel focuses on the fact that children, particulary girl children, live in a small ocean filled with predatory sharks.  To be a 'girlchild' is to have a cloud over your head, and to be the inevitable target of all the ills society can visit on a person; this nickname is what Rory's mother calls her in her most hopeless moments.

While the tale is told well, there is room for improvement.  The first-person style works well until it is disrupted by the author's decision to use redacted text, which jolts the reader out of the spell cast by the story into the metacognition that, oh, yes, I am reading a book.  Hassman uses the redacted text as a means to indicate that an unspeakable event has occurred, and perhaps a much shorter segment would work with the text rather than against it.  This appears more than once, however, and for several pages at a time.  Because I was reading this on a Nook, it was actually more confusing than anything, because I was concerned that there was something wrong with the electronic book before I realized that this was a purposeful convention.  Also, Hassman is obviously determined to have an understated tale, and thus verbally circles around the actual sexual abuse like a coyote afraid to pounce into the light.  Unfortunately, such concentrated circling is just as beat-you-over-the-head as repeatedly just coming out and saying it.  I wanted to scream, 'I get it!  She's being abused! Let's deal with it already!!!' Subtlety is good; too much subtlety is obvious and almost self-congratulating. 

Where Hassman is strong is in her ability to convey the horror of what Rory experiences without resorting to vile details.  She is excellent at showing, rather than telling, the story, and in respecting the reader's ability to make some leaps independent of guidance.  Also, while the events in the story aren't surprises at all, she gives them just enough of a twist, and personal nature, that this isn't tiresome.  Finally, in Rory, she has breathed life into a complex character who is full of real-life contradictions and emotions; the girl who is experiencing the ugliest of life's events simultaneously reads the Girl Scout Handbook like a bible despite never having the chance to actually *be* a scout.  Her inner resilience cannot be squashed, and when covered at one outlet burst forth from another like a redirected geyser.  The novel's close leaves the reader wondering at the entirely blank canvas in front of Rory, and in her ability to walk into the nothingness with a determination most adults might not muster.

I have seen on other sites that others have pointed to Hassman as a trailer-park Shakespeare.  I'm not sure I would go that far, but her molding of a story full of inevitability into an interesting and worthwhile read is impressive.  This would be a good book for if you're sick in bed, and need a short read that will take you through your illness; it would be best if you were able to read the entire thing with as few breaks as possible so as to avoid breaking the connection.  Because all of the sordid details are redacted, and she uses a ton of insinuation rather than plain speech, Hassman has widened her potential audience, and I would say that this would be appropriate for mid-teen up depending on your child, but definitely read it yourself first because there is discussion of adult relationships and drug use.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.  A good initial novel that quietly conveys resilience amid despair.