Anissa Gray’s first novel (only novel?) The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls was not for me. It bored me. The characters bored me, the plot bored me, the whole thing – so I stopped reading halfway through it. Maybe if I committed more time it would get better, but there is too much to read.
It follows a family dealing with the aftermath of the husband-wife team getting sent to prison for embezzling money from a charity they created. It’s not clear from the parts that I read why they did so, how, or whether they did it at all, just that their daughter, Kim, turns them in to the authorities and then the siblings of the wife, Alethia, have to take care of their children and one another.
Maybe it’s because it starts in the middle – with the crime having happened – that I didn’t care? That if we’d spent time establishing some relationship with them, or the children, or the siblings it wouldn’t be such a slog? Alas, no such luck.
Anyway, let me know if you finished it and found it Totally Gripping and maybe I’ll reconsider abandoning it, but probably not.
Literary Vice 