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This title in other editionsGirlchildby Tupelo Hassman
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Rory Hendrix is the least likely of Girl Scouts. She hasn't got a troop or even a badge to call her own. But she's checked the Handbook out from the elementary school library so many times that her name fills all the lines on the card, and she pores over its surreal advice (Uniforms, disposing of outgrown; The Right Use of Your Body; Finding Your Way When Lost) for tips to get off the Calle: that is, the Calle de las Flores, the Reno trailer park where she lives with her mother, Jo, the sweet-faced, hard-luck bartender at the Truck Stop.
Rory's been told that she is one of the “third-generation bastards surely on the road to whoredom.” But she's determined to prove the county and her own family wrong. Brash, sassy, vulnerable, wise, and terrified, she struggles with her mother's habit of trusting the wrong men, and the mixed blessing of being too smart for her own good. From diary entries, social workers' reports, half-recalled memories, arrest records, family lore, Supreme Court opinions, and her grandmother's letters, Rory crafts a devastating collage that shows us her world even as she searches for the way out of it. Tupelo Hassman's Girlchild is a heart-stopping and original debut. Review:"Blighted opportunity and bad choices revisit three generations of women in a Reno, Nev., trailer park in these affecting dispatches by debut novelist Hassman. Narrator Rory Dawn Hendrix, 'R.D.,' is growing up in the late '60s on the dusty calle, where families scrape by on low-paying jobs and government assistance, everything is broken down, violence barely suppressed, babysitting shared, and 'uncle' is more often than not a euphemism for child molester. 'Smokey, Barney, Johnny Law, Pig, uncles with their badges, with their belt buckles, say, 'Hey Sugar, Toots, Sweet Thing, is your mama home?' hand already through the already ripped screen door, finger on the latch.' Teenage pregnancies dogged both R.D.'s capricious mother, Jo, a waitress with four grown sons, and grandmother Shirley Rose, an inveterate gambler employed at the keno ticket counter who couldn't keep R.D.'s grandfather from sexually abusing R.D. and her sisters, and told R.D. to 'keep her legs closed if she wanted to keep her future open.' As bad as it is, there's some hope that this girl, with her early aptitude at spelling, will escape the stigma of being 'feebleminded.' Poring over a secondhand copy of The Girl Scout Handbook, with its how-to emphasis on honor and duty, comforts R.D., especially when babysat by Carol, a brutalized neighbor girl, who leaves R.D. alone with her predatory father, 'the Hardware Man.' Hassman's characters are hounded by a relentless, recurring poverty and ignorance, and by shame, so that the sins of the mothers keep repeating, and suicide is often the only way out. Despite a few jarring moments of moralizing, this debut possesses powerful writing and unflinching clarity. Agent: Bill Clegg, WME Entertainment." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review:"Girlchild is a devastating and hilarious portrait of poor white America. Tupelo Hassman's ruthless dissection of the laws, traditions, and values of a trailer park will leave you horrified and laughing uproariously. Hassman's novel is at once a ragtag anthem to the generations of single mothers raising their children on their own, a brilliant critique of the inadequacies of social services, and a colorful depiction of the extraordinary hurdles that children who break the cycle of poverty have to face. But mostly it is a description of the seismic transformations that happen within each of us as we fly the coop. Hassman's wildly inventive prose explodes off the page." Heather O'Neill, author of Lullabies for Little Criminals
Review:"This first novel is not like anything you or I have ever read. Something between a shocking exposé, a defiant treatise, a prose poem, and an exuberant Girl Scout manual, always formally inventive and bursting with energy, Girlchild will do nothing to disabuse you of the notion that lowdown trailer parks like this one outside of Reno jack up the birthrate and invite the sexual abuse of young girls if the innocents are left alone for even twenty minutes while an otherwise endearing grandma goes to play the slots. Yes, this is an insider's report confirming the worst you ever allowed yourself to think. And yet somehow Tupelo Hassman's book is also a testament to joy and beauty, and to the saving power of language wherever it gets a foothold. She has irrepressible high spirits, which in this case flow forth as brilliance and lyricism, even from the trailer park perspective. Tupelo Hassman loves life, including this life, in spite of everything, and you can't help loving this novel along with her." Jaimy Gordon, author of the National Book Award-winning Lord of Misrule
Review:"Beautiful....Ms. Hassman is such a poised storyteller that her prose practically struts. Her words are as elegant as they are fierce. A voice as fresh as hers is so rare that at times I caught myself cheering....I don't know about you, but I'd go anywhere with this writer." The New York Times
Review:"Girlchild...unfolds a compelling, layered narrative told by a protagonist with a voice so fresh, original, and funny youll be in awe. This novel rocks....In Girlchild Tupelo Hassman has created a character you'll never forget. Rory Dawn Hendrix of the Calle has as precocious and endearing a voice as Holden Caulfield of Central Park. When you finish this novel, your sorrow at turning the last page will be eased by your excitement at what this sassy, talented author will do next." The Boston Globe
Review:"The real pleasure of the book comes from following the wisecracking, tough and sensitive Rory as she struggles to survive and escape the sort of life no girl should have to lead." Michelle Quint, San Francisco Chronicle
Review:"It's Rory's voice, as well as the offbeat ways in which she presents her coming-of-age story that make Girlchild so memorable....Rory is like a miniature Margaret Mead, observing and chronicling the life of the trailer park with an insider's knowledge and an anthropologist's detachment....It's a testament to Hassman's assurance as a writer that, even though we readers have the option of leaving, we hunker down in that trailer park with Rory for the long dry season of her youth." Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air
Review:"In Girlchild, Hassman's spunky, shy and almost accidentally intelligent heroine, Rory Dawn Hendrix, is living in a trailer park outside Reno, 'south of nowhere.' Her mother, Jo, is a truck-stop bartender prone to trusting the wrong men....The book's portraiture is vivid and hauntingly unfamiliar; Hassman's personal history matters less than the artistic care she takes here — and she takes a great deal of care." The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review:"Tupelo Hassman's lyrical and fiercely accomplished first novel brings us three generations of Hendrix women washed up in 'the Calle'....In Hassman's skilled hands, what could have been an unrelenting chronicle of desolation becomes a lovely tribute to the soaring, defiant spirit of a survivor." People
Review:"Rory Hendrix will soon be a character readers around the country will know. She's the young heroine of Tupelo Hassman's debut Girlchild, a novel that drops us into her home in a Reno trailer park and invites us to be the only other member of her Girl Scout troop. With humor, warmth, and unflinching prose, Girlchild is a youth survival story of the very first rate." Publishers Weekly, pick of the week
Review:"This is a gorgeous first novel, as humorous as it is heartbreaking. Some will see similarities between Hassman and National Book Award recipient Jaimy Gordon (Lord of Misrule), and fans of coming-of-age novels will fall in love with Rory's story." Mara Dabrishus, Library Journal (starred review)
Review:"Hassman's debut gives voice — and soul — to a world so often reduced to cliché." Kirkus Reviews
Review:"In this inventive, exciting debut, Hassman writes a 1980s Reno trailer park into a neon, breathing world....Hassman's creatively-titled, short, free-form chapters are helium-filled imagination fodder, and Hassman takes what could be trite or unbelievable in less-talented hands and makes it entirely the opposite." Booklist
Synopsis:A New York Times Book Review Editors Choice Rory Hendrix, the least likely of Girl Scouts, hasnt got a troop or a badge to call her own. But she still borrows the Handbook from the elementary school library to pore over its advice, looking for tips to get off the Calle—the Reno trailer park where she lives with her mother, Jo, the sweet-faced, hard-luck bartender at the Truck Stop. Rorys been told she is one of the “third-generation bastards surely on the road to whoredom,” and shes determined to break the cycle. As Rory struggles with her mothers habit of trusting the wrong men, and the mixed blessing of being too smart for her own good, she finds refuge in books and language. From diary entries, social workers' reports, story problems, arrest records, family lore, and her grandmothers letters, Tupelo Hassman's Girlchild crafts a devastating collage that shows us Rory's world while she searches for the way out of it. About the AuthorTupelo Hassman graduated from Columbia's MFA program. Her writing has been published in the Portland Review Literary Journal, Paper Street Press, Tantalum, We Still Like, and Zyzzyva, and by 100 Word Story, Five Chapters.com, and Invisible City Audio Tours.
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