I loved Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls. After finishing On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I was really yearning for something to match the beauty of Vuong’s prose, and Madden delivered.

I found this book left on the sidewalk in the West Village some time last Fall and took it home. It then spent the better part of a year being too promising to get rid of but not enough to read. Only recently when I was out of fresh books to read and craving something narrative did I start it.

Madden jumps around through time and tells her stories of childhood in such a way as to make me feel like I’m there, in her child brain with her. When she was disoriented you are disoriented, when she was happy, you are happy. The way she writes takes a little bit of getting used to, but it’s so good.

I’m really glad I picked it up off the street, leave no sidewalk book left unexamined—I recently scored a 2022 copy of the AP Stylebook in the UWS.