Ugly Girls

September 8, 2014
Hunter (Don’t Kiss Me) has written two collections of gritty, often grotesque, flash fiction populated by downtrodden characters slogging through depressingly
marginal lives, her first full-length novel traverses similar territory. Pretty but trashy Perry and her butch, smack-talking best friend, Dayna (aka Baby Girl), spend most days cutting class and most nights sneaking out, going for joyrides in stolen cars, and antagonizing the waitstaff at Denny’s. The hours at home are equally dreary—Dayna’s stuck caring for her mentally handicapped brother who was hurt in a motorcycle accident while Perry does her best to ignore her perpetually drunk mother and beaten, ineffectual stepfather. Circumstances get slightly more titillating when Jamey, a supposed newcomer to the area, starts flirting with them online, but the competition over him inevitably causes tension. Not surprisingly, his mysterious online persona is far from the creepy reality, and, in a final showdown readers will see coming, everyone gets their comeuppance—especially Jamey. The world of pick-up trucks and trailer parks Hunter’s characters inhabit is already relentlessly bleak; a gratuitous scene at the end involving Perry and a forced sexual encounter (not involving Jamey) renders the plot intolerable.

September 15, 2014
Two high school girls put on a tough act to hide deep-seated insecurities in this gripping character-driven novel. Hunter (Don't Kiss Me, 2013, etc.) opens in medias res with Baby Girl driving a stolen red Mazda. Perry, riding shotgun, looks at Baby Girl and thinks, "Fake-ass thug." With this quick insight, it's clear that, despite sharing nights of "thugging," their bond is very thin. Each girl masks a private pain. Baby Girl's gun-carrying older brother, Charles, was in a motorcycle accident that left him with irreversible brain damage. She's shaved half her head and stolen cars in an attempt to fill his place. Perry, who lives in a trailer park with her stepfather and alcoholic mother, has relied on her looks to get what she wants since she was 14. The novel's power lies in its depth. The roving third-person narrator dips in and out of five main characters' minds. In addition to Perry and Baby Girl, there's Perry's mother, Myra; her stepfather, Jim; and Jamey, a threatening and mysterious figure who seems to be stalking both girls. The depiction of the working-class poor is nuanced and real. Myra is saved from becoming a flat depiction of an absentee mother when we see her internal struggle with alcoholism. Jim is similarly saved from becoming a stereotypical "good guy" when we follow him to his job as a prison guard and watch him beat prisoners for simply mentioning his family life. As the perspectives weave together and move forward, Hunter toys with the reader's sympathies. Characters we might have written off or hated re-emerge in full and compelling form. Even Jamey, the villain, becomes somewhat sympathetic when we see what life looks like inside his home. As Baby Girl and Perry continue shoplifting and skipping school, unaware of the true danger that approaches them, the action accelerates. The novel moves toward a conclusion that is shocking, sad and inevitable. In a haunting portrait of longing, Hunter forces the reader to relate to a wide array of human ugliness.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2014

Was innocence ever an option for Perry and Baby Girl? They've bonded over skipping school and joyriding in stolen cars, but what they really share is a deep sense of loss. Both are driven to keep on the move, twitching with the need to connect but never knowing how. The adults around them are failing as well. Jim, Perry's guardian angel stepfather, gives into despair and anger and loses his one chance to divert the unkind fate awaiting them all. One bad choice follows another, fear triumphs over compassion, and the whirlwind of hopelessness grows. VERDICT Acclaimed short story writer Hunter's (Don't Kiss Me) debut novel is a gritty and unrelenting baring of lost souls that pulls readers along. The girls are not ugly, but their lives are. For readers with an appreciation of the dark and bitter. [See "Editors' Fall Picks," p. 27, LJ 9/1/14.]--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2014
When the reader first meets Baby Girl and Perry, the two teenagers are joyriding in a stolen car. Perry is the pretty one. Baby Girl is the mean one. Both are living lives at the figurative intersection of anomie and ennuiPerry, in a double-wide trailer with her stepfather, a prison guard, and her mother, an alcohol abuser; Baby Girl, with an uncle and a brain-damaged brother. Though self-hatred and fear are staples of these girls' lives, things seem to be looking up when Baby Girl meets a boy on Facebook, and Perry falls in love with a classmate. But don't pop the champagne corks just yet; Hunter's first novel takes an (American) gothic turn at this point, and dark shadows threaten to eclipse the girls' lives. As misadventure follows misadventure, the book adds a layer of melodrama that appears on the verge of taking the novel over the top. Yetall this asideauthor Hunter has done a superb job of establishing and maintaining mood and tone while creating a story that is compulsively readable. And that ending . . .(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)