Maggie Thrash

This novel based on and set amid the Satanic Panic of the 80's and 90's is hilarious and ghoulish—snortingly funny, in a way that made me feel somewhat guilty. It's audacious, uproarious, uncompromisingly queer, and macabre, like an R-rated Addams Family. There are lines I am still snickering at a month later, which somewhat lightens the horrors I can never unread. Rainbow Black's prose is unflinching, in every way, staring down grisly horror, dreadful abuse and negligence, and ghastly, cringeworthy precocious adolescence. Only you can decide which is the most traumatic!… (mehr)

Representation: Black character
Trigger warnings: Disappearance and death of a cat, racism, slavery and abuse mentioned, blood depiction, emesis, child neglect, depression
Score: Six points out of ten.
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I saw Lost Soul, Be at Peace, hiding on a library shelf, so I wanted to read it. Soon enough, I picked it up and read it, but when I finished the novel, I realised a few aspects of the book. First, it was part of a series, but unfortunately, the library didn't have the first instalment, Hono[u]r Girl. However, at its best, Lost Soul, Be at Peace was disorienting--the text was underwhelming at worst.

It starts with the first person I see, Maggie Thrash, living in a mansion a year and a half after an event I don't know much of. She recounts her life thus far as uneventful and even depressing as she isn't doing too well in 11th grade, and to top everything off, her cat disappeared. Maggie spends the opening pages searching for that feline when she stumbles across another ghostly character, Tommy. I can understand why Maggie is depressed because her parents neglect her, but she also talks about how her coming out has gone unnoticed, which rubbed me the wrong way. It's like she wants attention from that. I couldn't connect or relate to any of the characters, and the story does not make an outstanding memoir because it's too monotonous. The conclusion is a high note, but petered out Lost Soul, Be at Peace. I don't know anyone who has Hono[u]r Girl yet, so I'll never know what happened there.… (mehr)