Marilou Is Everywhere

Starred review from May 15, 2019
When one girl goes missing, another slides into her place in Smith's hauntingly gorgeous debut novel. At 14, Cindy Stoat lives with her two older brothers in rural Pennsylvania, "basically feral" since, a few months ago, their mother last floated out of their lives. And it is during this bleak summer that Jude Vanderjohn, the sometime girlfriend of Cindy's brother, Virgil, goes missing. Cindy has been fascinated by Jude for years: Jude is older and cooler than she is and better off, the daughter of a professor, and the only black person in school ("well, mixed, but in Greene County that meant basically the same thing"). In the weeks after her disappearance, it is Virgil who takes on the role of caretaker for Jude's ailing, alcoholic mother, Bernadette. Cindy's presence at Bernadette's is, at first, a fluke, a way to escape the oppressive reality of her own life at home. Until, one night, Bernadette, in her state, mistakes Cindy for Jude, and Cindy slowly slips into the role. "I wasn't trying to become Jude. Not exactly. But I wanted to disappear, and she had left a space," she explains. "When I stepped into that space, I vanished from my senses. It changed me into someone who didn't have my actual mind." As Jude, Cindy becomes, for the first time, somebody's daughter, even if it's a delusion. Alone together, the two share a tenuous dreamlike existence where Jude isn't lost and Cindy is loved. And it's a kindness, isn't it, to spare Bernadette from unthinkable pain? This is how Cindy justifies it to herself, anyway--how she keeps justifying it even after she's crossed lines that can't be uncrossed. It sounds overwrought; it isn't. Smith, who never insults her characters by pitying them, captures this unstable world with matter-of-fact poetry, spare and sensual and surprisingly funny. Bleak and vivid; Smith's characters are as rich as her prose.

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May 27, 2019
Smith’s solid debut follows the isolated and overlooked life of a teen in rural Pennsylvania. After 14-year-old Cindy Stoat and her older brothers, Clinton and Virgil, are abandoned by their mother, they make do with canned goods, candy, and income from the brothers’ lawn-mowing business amid the constant meddling of education officials who hope to bring Cindy back to school. Their stagnant and isolated existence is broken open when a teenage neighbor, Jude Vanderjohn, goes missing. A popular but complicated girl, Jude is so much of what Cindy herself feels she could never be, and her disappearance rocks not only the community, but Cindy’s day-to-day existence, especially after Virgil begins bringing her to spend time with Jude’s mother, Bernadette. Bernadette is a former hippie, a half-mystic, and an alcoholic who mistakes Cindy for her disappeared daughter, an identity crisis that Cindy cherishes, hoping desperately for her life to change, and leading to a terrible decision as she tries to maintain the illusion. Smith’s rural world is brought to life with precise and devastating descriptions of poverty and neglect, though sometimes the lyricism of the prose doesn’t gel. Still, fans of Gabriel Tallent’s My Absolute Darling will appreciate Cindy’s toughened point of view and Smith’s close attention to the details of rural Appalachian life. This is a promising debut.

August 16, 2019

DEBUT Scraping by in rural Pennsylvania with older brothers Clinton and Virgil after their mother seemingly wanders off for good, 14-year-old Cindy Stoat is the classic outsider. And Jude Vanderjohn is the classic glamour-queen teen whose disappearance has the town in an uproar. Surprisingly, Jude had been involved with Virgil, who rushes over to care for Jude's wealthy if burnt-out, alcoholic hippie-artiste mom, bringing Cindy along to help. One day, deeply in a daze, Bernadette mistakes Cindy for her lost daughter, though Jude is of mixed raced (which makes her black in Appalachia) and Cindy is white. Cindy plays along, both for Bernadette and for herself, but this is no Cinderella story. However much she needs love and a better live, Cindy carries her role uncomfortably, in the end learning that it's one she just can't play. VERDICT Unexpectedly hard-edged, this engrossing story from first novelist Smith feels lived-in and real. In the end, what happens to both Jude and Cindy comes as a surprise, teaching us what we can and can't escape and what it means to remake ourselves despite the past. [See Prepub Alert 1/23/19.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2019
In rural Pennsylvania, just up the road from the crowded place where 14-year-old Cindy and her two brothers live (sans parents), older teen Jude and her witchy mom, Bernadette, have a sprawling estate to themselves. When Jude disappears, locals expect the worst, and Bernadette, about whom rumors already flew, loses any remaining grip on reality. Without much intention, Cindy becomes Bernadette's caretaker, trying to keep her from burning down the house or drinking herself to death, and soon becomes Jude in Bernadette's eyes. A crucial moment arrives when Cindy must commit to Bernadette's presumption, or come clean. This is a mysterious and strangely exciting debut. Smith is a poet, and writes in sensory-driven, soul-tapping prose: "I had a way of standing around which indicated I would like to be pulled inside out and swiftly disappeared from the earth." Despite her isolation, professed ignorance, and desire to self-annihilate, bright and brave narrator Cindy understands much of the world, its hardships and moral quandaries, and the startling lack of guarantees that come with being born.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)