![]() Alcohol turns Daddy from a vacant, shiftless figure into a mean drunk who doesn't like being contradicted. Often this physicality lurches into violence. Ward is astonishingly attentive to the body, from Esch's nausea and permanently bursting bladder to the light-reflecting, gorgeous skin of her beloved Manny, Skeetah's best friend and the unwilling father of her child-to-be. ![]() This bloody, graphic scene sets the tone for an all-pervading physicality. Randall, the eldest, is hoping for a basketball scholarship, while Skeetah is obsessed with his pitbull China, who gives birth to a litter of valuable puppies. The older boys have more productive hobbies. Junior, who never knew his mother, seems at times more animal than human, a touch-hungry changeling who spends most of his days burrowing in the earth beneath the house. The sheets are so dirty that "we'd wake up often in the middle of the night, itching, scratching a shin, an ankle". Food is strictly rationed, and a meal of squirrel, shot in the forest and barbecued, is gulped down with stolen bread. ![]() Details seep out like involuntary revelations. She's so tough, in fact, that it takes a while to realise how deprived these motherless children are. ![]()
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