A review by kristina_h
The Gypsy Moth Summer by Julia Fierro
4.0
With six different points of view, The Gypsy Moth Summer reminds me of an overgrown garden, where characters’ lives are like tangled roots that weave in and out of one another, desperate to feed and bloom.
Fierro’s prose is thick with detail; I often had to reread sentences several times, not an easy feat for a novel so long. Deconstructing her heavy sentences was worth it, however; I was transported back to the 90’s, mostly through the young and impressionable Maddie, ripe with the culture of her decade. At times the vernacular felt forced, but not enough to detract from the story. Fierro’s robust descriptions made me I feel like I could pick each of her characters out in a crowd of millions. Not that I would want to; each of them with their own buried secrets, some deeper and darker than others.
At times the novel barely crept along, like a newly sown seed. At other times it seemed rushed, blooming overnight. And so much, maybe too much, happened in those last pages; as if someone took a weed wacker to the garden, hungry and merciless.
In the end, I wouldn’t mind rereading The Gypsy Moth Summer and spending more time in Fierro’s fine, albeit dense, garden.
Fierro’s prose is thick with detail; I often had to reread sentences several times, not an easy feat for a novel so long. Deconstructing her heavy sentences was worth it, however; I was transported back to the 90’s, mostly through the young and impressionable Maddie, ripe with the culture of her decade. At times the vernacular felt forced, but not enough to detract from the story. Fierro’s robust descriptions made me I feel like I could pick each of her characters out in a crowd of millions. Not that I would want to; each of them with their own buried secrets, some deeper and darker than others.
At times the novel barely crept along, like a newly sown seed. At other times it seemed rushed, blooming overnight. And so much, maybe too much, happened in those last pages; as if someone took a weed wacker to the garden, hungry and merciless.
In the end, I wouldn’t mind rereading The Gypsy Moth Summer and spending more time in Fierro’s fine, albeit dense, garden.