The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo

I have been an avid reader for as long as I can remember and that means I read between 52-156 books a year depending on my level of busy-ness. First, I inhaled all the childhood favorites like the Little House, Black Stallion, and Trixie Belden series. Then I consumed the classics- my world view was forever shaped by Jane Eyre and 1984. In my early 20s my new obsession was the Catherine Cookson’s Mallen series and all the English royalty historical fiction. In my 30s and early 40s I loved the comfort, familiarity, and predictably of serial mysteries; I loved series with female protagonists as I felt like I was meeting an old friend with each book, I loved books set in places I had lived or traveled as I could walk familiar paths, I could relate to the homey mysteries as they made housekeeping and child care interesting- nothing like finding a dead body to bring spice into your life! But throughout all the periods I have liked general fiction and fantasies that gave me a window into new and different worlds- I loved being challenged with mind-opening ideas, being an armchair traveler, and having the opportunity to “walk in someone else’s shoes.”

As I approach 50, I have hit a reading rut-  it feels like “What has been is what will be,and has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 ). I still read as much as ever, but I find myself frustrated with the “same ol’ same ol.” Everything feels derivative, like there is nothing new or fresh:

“If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burden of a former child.” (Shakespeare’s Sonnet 59)

But then I started Talk-Funny Girl by Ronald Merullo; it could be described as a coming-of-age story with slight hints of Ellen Foster, but the setting, rural New England, was fresh for me. Talk-Funny Girl brought  shades of Stephen King’s worlds of darkness and oddity but with incredible resilience bred from isolation and independence. Merullo uses a dialect that is completely brand new to me- one that is intriguing and unusual- and brings his story to life with imagery that puts me in a new and different place. Merullo’s protagonist, Marjorie, tells her story from her future so I had confidence that she survived her horrific home life, but the pacing and suspense of the story kept me on the edge of my seat and made me worry that she was an unreliable narrator. The story was also intriguing in its examination of Marjorie’s parents’  twisted backwoods’ religion with the hint of a murder mystery thrown in; Talk-Funny Girl felt like a realistic window into how poisoned a soul can become by extreme poverty and lack of education.

I was so happy to stumble upon this book and am thrilled to recommend it to my peers who are becoming as jaded as I!

Find and reserve this book in our catalog.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

Other books by David Mitchell are uber weird, and you should read them if you’re into all things postmodern and metanarrative-y and unusual, and you should especially read Cloud Atlas if you are a music dork like my friend Bob.

But this novel completely defied my expectations–it’s a straightforward narrative about a 13-year-old boy with a stammer living in a teensy town in Thatcher-era England, and semi-autobiographical to boot. It takes place over the course of 1 year + 1 month (1982/3), with a chapter for every month, and 1 significant episode for every chapter.

Jayson Taylor is the protagonist, and in addition to his mortifying stammer he has a pair of lucky red underpants, an older sister who despises him (at first), parents with a dissolving marriage, and an unfortunately sensitive and intelligent brain that compels him to secretly write and publish poetry under the pseudonym Eliot Bolivar.  He’s precocious, but not overly so, and has a lovely way of describing everything, including stammerers: “they go trembly-red like an evenly matched arm wrestler, and their mouth guppergupperguppers like a fish in a net. It must be quite a funny sight.”

So on paper this resembles a standard nerdboy bildungsroman, however David Mitchell is much too talented to turn out something so humdrum.  Some reviewers have compared this to Catcher in the Rye (but not cynical) or Huck Finn (but in England, and not on a raft, and without the mysterious wooden leg…).

Honestly you could easily compare this to any brilliantly written coming-of-age novel.  Yet, it’s very much the work of Mitchell: he’s obsessed with using chapters as a means of organizing his ideas, though often with outlandish results. In this case, it’s 13 months in 13 chapters for a 13-year-old, and each chapter functions as a short story with a definite beginning, middle, end, and overall conundrum.  And by the time you reach the last of the 13 short stories/chapters they’ve been woven together into a marvelous novel, which is Jason’s 13th year of life, and a huge turning point for him.  That Mitchell pulls this off without being annoyingly pat or obvious or contrived is why I will continue to recommend and read his books.

And by the bye, years ago I read this with a book club that I used to lead, all of whom were suspicious of my selection (for some reason): well, they universally loved it, and were determined to recommend it to both friends and children and grandchildren.

You will like it.