Girlchild, Tupelo Hassman
Girlchild, Tupelo Hassman
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Girlchild
A Novel

Author: Tupelo Hassman

Narrator: Tupelo Hassman

Unabridged: 5 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/28/2012

Synopsis

Rory Hendrix is the least likely of Girl Scouts. She hasn't got a troop or even a badge to call her own. But she's checked the Handbook out from the elementary school library so many times that her name fills all the lines on the card, and she pores over its surreal advice (Uniforms, disposing of outgrown; The Right Use of Your Body; Finding Your Way When Lost) for tips to get off the Calle: that is, the Calle de las Flores, the Reno trailer park where she lives with her mother, Jo, the sweet-faced, hard-luck bartender at the Truck Stop.

Rory's been told that she is one of the "third-generation bastards surely on the road to whoredom." But she's determined to prove the county and her own family wrong. Brash, sassy, vulnerable, wise, and terrified, she struggles with her mother's habit of trusting the wrong men, and the mixed blessing of being too smart for her own good. From diary entries, social workers' reports, half-recalled memories, arrest records, family lore, Supreme Court opinions, and her grandmother's letters, Rory crafts a devastating collage that shows us her world even as she searches for the way out of it.

Tupelo Hassman's Girlchild is a heart-stopping and original debut.

About Tupelo Hassman

Tupelo Hassman’s debut novel, Girlchild, was the recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, Harper’s Bazaar, Imaginary Oklahoma, The Independent, Portland Review, and ZYZZYVA, among other publications. She is the recipient of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award and the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award, and is the first American to have won London’s Literary Death Match. She earned her MFA at Columbia University.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Natalie on October 08, 2012

I kept telling everyone I liked this book. And, then I realized that it took me over two months to read it--which it certainly shouldn't have, given its relatively unassuming length and short chapters. I think that I wanted to like this book-- I ALMOST liked this book. The prose-poem style made it a......more

Goodreads review by Blair on July 09, 2015

So I read the blurb for Girlchild - the one that says Tupelo Hassman's debut 'crafts a devastating collage' of her protagonist's world - but I didn't expect the book to literally feel like a collage of only loosely interconnected scenes, which is essentially what it is. The narrative flips back and......more

Goodreads review by Angela on August 10, 2012

From Lilac Wolf and Stuff The cover caught my eye. A trailer that looks like it would feel at home in my trailer park but set in the desserts of Nevada. I started reading and it knocked me over to read a story that followed my own childhood eerily close. It didn't hide how common child sexual abuse is......more

Goodreads review by piperitapitta on May 21, 2021

American Dream «Questo classico cocktail ha subito alcuni cambiamenti dalla sua prima comparsa. Inizialmente era composto da ambizione e sudore in parti uguali, con una buccia di mela tagliata a spirale come guarnizione, mentre il sogno americano moderno propone come creativo sostituto fortuna inc......more

Goodreads review by Kelly on March 05, 2012

The disjointed narrative, made up of flashbacks, legal documents, court proceedings, and bits of the present, didn't work for me in this book because it never allowed Rory to have a voice. And while the fact she doesn't have a voice makes sense in the story, I couldn't connect with her for a long ti......more

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