Weekly Reads: Still Life With Tornado

Still Life with Tornado is the newest book by teen author extraordinaire, A.S. King. Every book I've read of hers is pure gold, and the same is true with this one. King weaves in bits of magical realism to this coming-of-age story about a teen artist, while uncovering truths about her family dynamics, and abuse. The pov toggles from the daughter to the mother and your heart tears open as the story unfolds.

My rating: 4 stars.

Summary from goodreads:

“I am sixteen years old. I am a human being.”

Actually Sarah is several human beings. At once. And only one of them is sixteen. Her parents insist she’s a gifted artist with a bright future, but now she can’t draw a thing, not even her own hand. Meanwhile, there’s a ten-year-old Sarah with a filthy mouth, a bad sunburn, and a clear memory of the family vacation in Mexico that ruined everything. She’s a ray of sunshine compared to twenty-three-year-old Sarah, who has snazzy highlights and a bad attitude. And then there’s forty-year-old Sarah (makes good queso dip, doesn’t wear a bra, really wants sixteen-year-old Sarah to tell the truth about her art teacher). They’re all wandering Philadelphia—along with a homeless artist allegedly named Earl—and they’re all worried about Sarah’s future.

But Sarah’s future isn’t the problem. The present is where she might be having an existential crisis. Or maybe all those other Sarahs are trying to wake her up before she’s lost forever in the tornado of violence and denial that is her parents’ marriage.

“I am a human being. I am sixteen years old. That should be enough.”

Weekly Reads: I Crawl Through

A.S. King can do no wrong in my opinion. She is an author that churns out unique/amazing/weird/awesomeness with every book she writes. I Crawl Through It is her newest and I received an electronic advanced reader copy of this book back in May and started reading it immediately.

It.
Was.
Weird.

But in a most delightful way. Per usual.

Read it, and everything else she has written. You won't regret it.

My rating: 5 stars.

Summary from goodreads:

A boldly surreal novel from one of the best YA writers working today.

Four talented teenagers are traumatized-coping with grief, surviving date rape, facing the anxiety of standardized tests and the neglect of self-absorbed adults--and they'll do anything to escape the pressure. They'll even build an invisible helicopter, to fly far away to a place where everyone will understand them... until they learn the only way to escape reality is to face it head-on.