“When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy.”
That’s the first line of Kaye Gibbon’s noel “Ellen Foster.” How could you not read on?
“Ellen Foster” is the story of Ellen, a little girl with a hard childhood and how she finds her way to a safe place. Ellen lives with her ailing mother and abusive father. She watches as members of her family kill themselves or die of old age, leaving her more and more alone. But Ellen is an industrious little girl who is not about to let her future just happen. She develops a plan and sees it out so that she can end up somewhere safe, surrounded by people who love her.
Gibbons tells Ellen’s story in first person and while there is dialogue, she uses no quotations. Words, thought and narrative flow into each other to form a fluid story to wade through. In many tale this would be difficult, but “Ellen Foster” is just a short novel and so much of the subject matter is painful reading that I think the challenging writing style helps distance the reader.
A quick read, “Ellen Foster” is an engaging story and it would be difficult to finish and not like Ellen.
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