All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

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Lccn 2016002476 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.15 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-1200406 Openlibrary_edition I learned all this from eavesdropping on Mom's Tuesday night book club. Sometimes they talked about books, but mostly they gossiped. That was where Mom first started polishing The Tragic and Edifying Story of Wavonna Quinn. Was it all completely realistic? Maybe not. But in the end this is a fiction book and by remembering that it helped me to relax and just appreciate the story. Are my beliefs changed by what I read? Not really. Maybe this sounds strange and I don't really know how to explain what I mean, but I just feel a bit different after reading this. At lunch, Wavy sat at the table, but didn’t eat anything. Same thing at dinner and breakfast the next morning.

Did your views change with regard to what constitutes the nature of consent and, in the author's words, "a child's right to "bodily sovereignty?" I came to the end of the novel with my mind reeling, my emotions scattered, and completely unsure exactly what I did feel about it... but one thing is certain: I felt. Oh hell, I felt.There were so many POV’s that shaped this story. We don’t just get Wavy and Kellen, we get many side characters. Normally, I don’t love that in a story but it really worked for the way this was told. That conversation led to Wavy’s first visit to a therapist. She stopped unraveling her dresses and Mom went around looking triumphant. To Dad, she said: “I think we’ve had a breakthrough.”

Nonetheless, this book blew me away. I love a book that can make me feel the way this one did. I'm still feeling conflicted and uneasy with the content. That being said, I'm still thinking about it, and trying to figure out exactly how I feel, days later. That says a lot. It is a strange sensation to be rooting for a little girl and the much older thug who goes beyond rescuer to become her lover. But amid all the very ugly things in the world these two inhabit (very, very ugly), their connection is the only wonderful thing they have. If you fell for the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast (and who didn't?) you will fall for this very offbeat pair. So I found myself wishing the couple happiness through their many trials. The course of true love never runs easy, not in fairy tales and certainly not in the very real, very grim world the two lovers inhabit. Grandma blew out a big puff of air, the same way she used to exhale cigarette smoke, and shook her head. “Tell me your solution. Foster care? Send her to live with strangers?” Mom returned with a towel, which she tried to put over Wavy’s dripping hair. Before Mom could touch her, Wavy snatched the towel away and dried her own hair.Let’s just say, the evil aunt, the villain of the story? That would probably be me if I were a character in this book. Well, not exactly because I didn't like her and she hadn't done enough before everything went to hell. But you know what I mean...

Wavy's fears and her efforts to resist fear are major themes in the story. How does the refrain "nothing left to be afraid of" guide Wavy's life? Book Genre: Abuse, Adult, Adult Fiction, Coming Of Age, Contemporary, Dark, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Romance, Sociology, Young Adult it's official - coolest author-present ever!! thank you for this, and for writing this book, o bryn greenwood!! At first, I thought I was going to like ALL THE UGLY AND BEAUTIFUL THINGS because the writing and story are good, and even though it employs the use of multiple POVs, the story kept moving at a decent pace. But Wavy and Kellen's relationship made me very uncomfortable and I cringed reading it. What Kellen did was sexual abuse, because he took advantage of a very lonely, abused, and neglected child. It doesn't matter that Wavy consented to what he did and even sought it out; she was not in any emotional or psychological state to say yes because she was thirteen. The author writes what she knows. Her father was a drug dealer who ends up in prison, and as a young girl, she says she dated much older men, starting at age 13. She says she was made to feel ashamed and isolated because of it. She has openly questioned the rights of society to impose a legal age of consent onto children. Is this book her way of dealing with her experiences and framing it as legitimate? I don't know, but if so, she failed with this reader.

Things might have gotten better after that, if it hadn’t been for the other secret between Wavy and me. She liked to sneak out of the house at night, and I went with her. Breezing down the stairs on bare feet, we eased open the kitchen door and walked around the neighborhood. Kellan is big and overweight, biker and tattooed, ex-convict and son of an abusive parent. He is not attractive, but generous, of a great personality and, most importantly for Wavy, respects her space and accepts hers silences without questioning them. But Wavy’s mom Val is his wife, what time she isn’t lying in filth or stoned out of her mind. She tells Wavy her thoughts on men and food. And passes on her fear of germs. (They will get in you)