Marrow by Tarryn Fisher
In the Bone there is a house. In the house there is a girl. In the girl there is a darkness. Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn’t spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It’s not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life, she’s determined to find evil and punish it–targeting rapists and child molesters, one by one. But hunting evil is dangerous, and Margo risks losing everything, including her own soul.
Kindle Edition, 278 pages Published April 16th 2015
Current Goodreads Rating: 3.99 Stars
I would like to write a novel that every, single person loves, but not even J.K. Rowling could do that. Instead, I try to write stories that pull on people's emotions. I believe that sadness is the most powerful emotion, and swirled with regret the two become a dominating force. I love villains. Three of my favorites are Mother Gothel, Gaston and the Evil Queen who all suffered from a pretty wicked case of vanity (like me). I like to make these personality types the center of my stories.
I love rain, Coke, Starbucks and sarcasm. I hate bad adjectives and the word "smolder". If you read my book-I love you. If you hate my book-I still love you, but please don't be mean to me; I'm half badass, half cry baby.
Well this was not what I’d thought it would be. It was everyone’s deepest, darkest desires captured and executed. I’m impressed and left to think. Her statement at the end of the book made me cry (the last notable quotable).
It was blunt and erratic. Tarryn has a writing style I am still not used to and I have never seen before. She doesn't over explain things or write the book as a narrator to her characters. She is the characters. She goes through things then cut to the next event. There is no gently fluid observations or reflections. She is living her books.
This book is an experience that I'm still trying to capture days later. Marrow will stay with me for a long time and be hard to forget.
“I don’t ask for one, because I’ve been taught to believe it’s wrong to ask for things. You suffer quietly so no one has the right to call you a pussy.”
“Sadness is an emotion you can trust. It is stronger than all of the other emotions. It makes happiness look fickle and untrustworthy. It pervades, lasts longer, and replaces the good feelings with such an eloquent ease you don’t even feel the shift until you are suddenly wrapped in its chains.”
“Darkness is all I’ll ever know; maybe the key is to make poetry out of it.”
“Dreams are plans; they get your heart moving, and once your heart gets moving, your brain will follow.”
"they are so broken they don’t even know that most of what they do reflects that brokenness."
And the last statement, a personal note from the author that made me cry:
"Sometimes, by saving someone else, you save yourself a little as well. By loving someone else and expecting nothing in return, we learn to love ourselves and expect nothing in return. Perhaps it is the simple act of doing for others that makes us feel more valuable in our own skin. I want to implore you not to hurt yourselves. Not to cut your skin, or swallow pills, or drink to drown pain. Not to hand yourselves over so easily to men for validation. Stop feeling useless and worthless. Stop drowning in regret. Stop listening to the persistent voice of your past failures. You were that child once, who Margo would have killed for. Fight for yourselves. You have a right to live, and to live well. You’ll inherit flaws; you’ll develop new ones. And that’s okay. Wear them, own them, use them to survive. Don’t kill others; don’t kill yourselves. Be bold about your right to be loved. And most importantly, don’t be ashamed of where you’ve come from, or the mistakes you’ve made. In blindness, love will exhume you.