Laurie Foos

This was weird. I read "The Blue Girl" a couple months ago and was puzzled all the way around but I saw "Bingo Under the Crucifix" and the premise was fascinating enough to draw me in. Unfortunately it ended and I was just as puzzled as before. I love the idea of the story and I really liked the main character, Chloe, and some of the other side characters, but this alone didn't carry the book for me. I felt like I was skimming along the surface, waiting to dive in deeper. With the completion of this book, I think I am just not a Foos fan.… (altro)

Mmmm.....

I think that's the only real reaction I can get from this book.

The mothers stand by unable to move while one of their daughters has the courage to save the drowning blue girl. No one knows who the blue girl is nor where she comes from but she has a propensity for drowning, and the mothers have secretly been visiting her home to feed her moon pies made from their secrets. As the mothers' secrets become more plentiful, the blue girl becomes more gluttonous for the sticky marshmallow cream filling, and the daughters start to find suspicion in their mothers' behavior.

It's a book full of magical realism about these three mothers and how they came to live along this lake, a lake that attracted them like it attracts the summer tourists, but for some reason when fall comes, the tourists leave while they stay behind.

A story about the common doubts and regrets that comes from living in a small town I was intrigued by the premise but felt the writing to be juvenile, restrained, and even afraid. It didn't help that the story shifted perspective between the three mothers and their three daughters which served as a handicap so that the author wouldn't actually have to develop the relationships and setting more deeply.

As someone else mentioned in another thread, I'm finding a lot of these contemporary reads rely too heavily on this shifting perspectives trope and it mostly hurts, rather than aids their story. Also, was this story to be YA? With the writing level it felt YA, but the topic would have been stronger had it been a purely adult book but having both the point of view of both the daughters and the mothers scrambled the feel.

While some reviewers talk about the "haunting scenery" and find the book "compelling", I know I'll forget I ever read this book.… (altro)

‘’And so, on Tuesday nights, I wrap the moon pies in aluminum foil and I tell myself that I will be able to save my daughter - that I will be able to save all of us - once all the secrets has been eaten, digested, and somehow done away with.’’

An unnamed lake town that comes alive during the summer. The visiting tourists spend their quite, picturesque holidays and leave when summer ends, unaware of the secrets that haunt the small community. Unaware of the strange blue girl that eats moon pies filled with cream and lies. Unaware of the mothers who pour their faults and darkest secrets in the sweets, suffocating the Blue Girl, dragging her down in their mud. Unaware of the daughters’ struggle to make amends for their mothers’ mistakes. Unaware of the fathers who ignore everything and everyone.

The moon pies contain secrets too terrible to share. Secrets born out of regrets and wrongdoings, of stalled lives and unfulfilled wishes. Laurie Foos creates a contemporary tale using symbolism and psychology in a powerful, haunting scenery. The moon associated with womanhood and passion. The sweets, so deceptive in their nature, so tempting and harmful. The colour blue, a shade of guilt, melancholy and mystery. The thoughts of mothers and daughters conveyed through the haze, interrupting the silence of the girl who has no voice of her own. She still retains her own free will, though. The question is what will she choose to do with it?

Based on the medieval tradition of the Sin Eater, the villager who would accept the sins of the dying person and prepare the route away from Hell, Foos writes a beautiful, shocking novel about motherhood, family relationships and the need for understanding between the younger generation and their parents. A book impossible to review. You have to read it and experience it deeply…

‘’It’s as if she lights up somehow, like a house you pass at night when the shades are drawn. You start to imagine what the people inside are like, whether they’re watching sitcoms or waiting to kill each other, and you see that flash against the blinds coming from the TV screen. That’s what she is, I think, a Technicolor blue that lights and flashes when no one is looking.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com… (altro)