One review of this book, I believe, said this was the best thing they had read, since Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn." Oh, come on, girls, I wouldn't go THAT far, but "Marlena" does have a flavor of its own, which makes it unique to the generic type of novel that it is.
I will warn you that one prank perpetrated by Cat, Marlena, and their crowd, caused me to laugh out loud so much, it will be referred to, separately, in the post following this one.
Cat, short for Catherine, moves to Silver Lake, Michigan, with her older brother, Jimmy, when the mother's marriage falls apart. Cat is fifteen, still a student. Jimmy is 19, and would seem to be a slacker, but gets a factory job to help out at home. Mother cleans rich people's houses. Yes, they live on the wrong side of the tracks, but they do their best. Cat, at first, is the exemplary honor student, clean living girl, who is destined to go someplace; in other words get out of the crummy town she is now stuck in.
But that changes, when she and Marlena, who lives next door to her, collide. Marlena is a wild child--her father is barely at home, she has a special needs little brother named Sal (short for Salamander) and the father runs a meth lab. Every high school has its own version of Marlena--the girl who is just a little too experienced with things for her own good, especially at such a young age, with a history of coming to a bad end.
Cat becomes something of a wild thing herself, after hooking up with Marlena, and her group. Aside from the famous prank, she skips schools--a girl who is taking AP classes; can you imagine???--smokes, drugs, and experiments with sex. She is going down the tubes, but when Marlena's dad is finally arrested, and Sal goes into the child welfare system, Marlena begins to unravel, going wilder, and into a decline that precipitates her passing.
I reacted to this story in a rather personal way; it reminded me of my deceased childhood, friend, Doug, who also made bad choices, though he had the potential to be more than how he turned out. Like Cat in the present time--living a life in New York, like yours truly--I still am at a quandary as to whom to blame.
Still, there is a quality of independence and spirit to Marlena, that makes her likable, even if she does not always make the best choices. And the author's last sentence, after all having gone before, is unbearably poignant.
"Marlena" is written in an understated style, giving it a quiet understatement of its own. Its lack of floridness makes it unique among coming of age stories, which is why I want to see where Julie Buntin goes from here.
"Marlena" is hard to forget. A story of substance, not just girls having fun!
But what fun they have, when they do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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