Scan barcode
A review by sscullyy
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
4.0
I’m gonna need a palate cleanser after this one.
The story starts off right away with Ruthie’s disappearance and follows Joe’s and Norma/Ruthie’s lives after the event that changed everything.
I have a lot of feelings about this story. It just made me so mad but so achingly sad. Norma’s family was never happy because they were always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Norma to be taken away. The dreams that plagued her childhood and caused so much grief were her memories trying to break through. She technically had a more affluent childhood, but not a richer one. Her family life before she disappeared was so full of love and joy, and was so bland and constricted as she grew up.
Joe became a victim of his childhood, using Ruthie’s disappearance to completely fuck up his life. Time after time he failed to get out of his own way, making decisions I disagreed with and becoming a violent, angry person who pushed the remaining people in his life away. ”Maybe I’m just one of those people who are only happy when they aren’t. Maybe I find contentment in my own misery.”
Ruthie’s family and Ruthie herself were irreparably changed by her disappearance and I wasn’t satisfied with the ending (although that’s likely the point). Decades they could have had together are gone forever and their lifetimes of unhappiness can never be repaired. Normas parents never had to answer for their actions and she never would have known what happened had it not been for the (albeit too late) bravery of Aunt June to finally tell her a hard and difficult truth.
The story starts off right away with Ruthie’s disappearance
Spoiler
(kidnapping)I have a lot of feelings about this story. It just made me so mad but so achingly sad. Norma’s family was never happy because they were always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Norma to be taken away. The dreams that plagued her childhood and caused so much grief were her memories trying to break through. She technically had a more affluent childhood, but not a richer one. Her family life before she disappeared was so full of love and joy, and was so bland and constricted as she grew up.
Joe became a victim of his childhood, using Ruthie’s disappearance
Spoiler
and Charlie’s deathRuthie’s family and Ruthie herself were irreparably changed by her disappearance and I wasn’t satisfied with the ending (although that’s likely the point). Decades they could have had together are gone forever and their lifetimes of unhappiness can never be repaired. Normas parents never had to answer for their actions and she never would have known what happened had it not been for the (albeit too late) bravery of Aunt June to finally tell her a hard and difficult truth.