A review by chazaloo
Apple: Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth

5.0

This coming-of-age memoir is marketed as a Young Adult book, but handles its material with such maturity and originality that this adult reviewer found it beautiful, challenging, and rewarding. It chronicles the difficulties—and rewards—of growing up on the rez (in upstate New York, near Niagara Falls), and incorporates some history of the U.S. government-run boarding schools that destroyed so many native families, and discusses the effect of the boarding schools on the author’s family. The book incorporates free verse, prose, and artwork to tell the story. Sections of the book are structured around the sequences of songs on Beatles albums, with one part mapping the story onto the structures of the songs themselves. It’s remarkable that the author is able to pull this off, but not only does it work, the result is remarkably cohesive and heart-wrenchingly powerful. Highly recommended. I recently re-read it and found it equally as moving as I did on the first reading.