Tender Morsels

I just finished Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, which I put on hold at the library when it was pulled from Bitch magazine's list of "One Hundred Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader." I talk more about the list here and here. But basically they posted a list of "100 young adult novels that every feminist should add to the stack of books on their bedside table" on their website, people complained about three of the books, so Bitch "reconsidered" those books and ended up removing them from the list. The books were Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce, and Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott. I read the other two and blogged about them, but a friend had said she read Tender Morsels and it was good but hard to read. I started it, but got cold feet. Living Dead Girl was really hard to read--I didn't want to do that to myself again so soon. So I read all the Ender's Game books (well, five of them, anyhow) and a few other things (Hush, The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson for my bookclub, Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan, Small Gods by Terry Pratchett... um and I forget what else [and I didn't blog about them because I've been finishing my novel]) and then I came back to Tender Morsels.

I thought this was one of the most interesting, thoughtful books I'd read in a long time. About family and the decisions we make because of them: what they want, what we want, what we think they want, what we think they should want. But not only because of family. About growing up, and loyalty, and reality, and the ways we deal with reality. This was wonderfully a book like none I'd ever read. A terrific fairy tale. And yeah, a feminist book, absolutely.