Hurricane Girl
Ratings6
Average rating3.8
A propulsive and daring new novel by the author of Very Nice about a woman on the run from catastrophe, searching for love, home, a swimming pool, and for someone who can perhaps stop the bleeding from her head. "Marcy Dermansky is one of the most wildly original writers that I've ever read, and Hurricane Girl showcases what makes her so amazing. In tracking the unpredictable movements of a strange and hypnotic journey in the aftermath of a natural disaster, Dermansky nails the sensation of being alive, of navigating a world so strange that it’s almost a dream, of trying, again and again, to anchor yourself to a moment, to assure yourself that you exist, to withstand anything and somehow keep living." —Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here Allison Brody is thirty-two and newly arrived on the East Coast after just managing to flee her movie producer boyfriend. She has some money, saved up from years of writing and waitressing, and so she spends it, buying a small house on the beach. But then a Category 3 hurricane makes landfall and scatters her home up and down the shore, leaving Allison adrift. Should she go home from the bar with the strange cameraman and stay in his guest room? Is that a glass vase he smashed on her skull? Can she wipe the blood from her eyes, get in her car, and drive to her mother’s? Does she really love the brain surgeon who saved her, or is she just using him for his swimming pool? And is it possible to ever truly heal without seeking some measure of revenge? A gripping, provocative novel that walks a knife’s edge between comedy and horror, Hurricane Girl is the work of a singular talent, a novelist unafraid to explore the intersection of love, sex, violence, and freedom—while celebrating the true joy that can be found in a great swim and a good turkey sandwich.
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a very enjoyable bleak, black comedy with an interesting fractured structure that works incredibly well with the subject material. that structure though may also lead to it not staying with me for very long. also the ending was kinda underwhelming and a little sudden.
While I started to read this and got about 30pgs in I was tempted to put it down, mark it as a DNF and move onto a different one but I'm so happy I stayed along for the ride. Everything that I was starting to pick out that was were “quirks” I wasn't enjoying - became the best part of this novel and made it whole.
The smallest side note — I once had a boss named Keith, and he was truly, truly awful. I felt for Alison real hard on that one lol
Wow I really enjoyed this. One of my favorite things about it, something I thought quite a lot especially as the book went along, is how the trauma impacts the main character very early on in the book and she appears so jaded to it from the outset that we actually never really get to see her "at her norm" throughout the book, I felt. So much of the book is spent after a very serious injury and traumatic event, one which makes you wonder if she is being the way she is because of the injury, or if she's just like that and not knowing makes this all the more intriguing.
This is a book about self sabotage, about self respect, about coping, about consent, and while all of those may seem obvious while reading they don't feel smeared on. They feel incredibly adequately thought out for someone who has had their entire life upended so quickly in ways that are dazzling to them. Despite the fact this dazzling display seems so obvious to us, the reader, to be able to determine when the good and bad are happening, I loved that things are all the more confusing to the character Alison herself. I really appreciated the lens this book lets us read from and the frankly surprising way that it unfolds.
