Oh my God, I didn't even know this was an Oprah book until I put in the ISBN on here. It doesn't even say anywhere on the book. I guess the whole clearance section at Half Price Books is basically just Oprah books and nothing else. Geez.

I liked this book a lot. It's about a little girl whose mother kills herself and all her relations are totally worthless, and how she decides to do something about it instead of just letting all this ruin her. Oprah probably liked this book because it tackles the following issues:

*Suicide
*Addiction
*Orphans
*The Injustice of the Courts
*Child Abuse
*Racism
*Being Poor
*Being Homeless
*Being Worked Too Hard
*Bad Relationships

I think the main reason I liked this book is that I pretty much love any story about disadvantaged and unloved children who overcome all odds and succeed in the end, the worse, the better (A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Jane Eyre, etc. etc.). You could take any stupid plot, plug an orphan in, and as long as they're feisty and not a stupid whiner or a brat, I will pretty much like it. Oh, and it has to have lots of hardship. Hardship makes for a great story.

This author kind of reminds me of Flannery O'Connor, except she doesn't suck.

An interesting thing about this book is that I noticed partway in that it doesn't use quotation marks to delineate dialogue, which is funny because I totally bashed this other book "Plainsong" for annoying me with that same thing. I guess this one works because it's in the first person and it's from a child's perspective. The other one was third person omniscient and it pissed me off.

Anyway, it's a good book and I'm starting to wonder if I really want to give it up. I'd like to share it but I sure enjoyed it myself and maybe I'll reread it. It might just have to be added to my ever growing collection of Misused Orphan Waif books.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Entered in work book swap.