Tag: Sarah McCarry

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All Our Pretty Songs by Sarah McCarry

The first book written, but the second I read and the second in sequence. It continues from Dirty Wings… it’s the next generation, Maia and Cass’s daughters.

Reading, it was interesting to see what our narrator gets “wrong” about Cass and Maia’s journey… and to think about what our narrator misunderstood versus what she was mislead about. This book’s journey is somewhat less harrowing, though Aurora’s (and even our narrator’s) lifestyle isn’t one that mom’s are going to encourage their daughters to follow.

The book tackles powerful, senseless teenage love; something that always reads as exaggerated to me… but it works here. The “sisters” are drawn so carefully, as are their relationships to their parents and their deliberate reflection (and rejection) of those parental traits.

It was a compelling read with great characters, despite the superficially lower stakes for the first two-thirds of the book. When she commits, decides to thwart the fait accomplis, she’s almost as driven as Cass and Maia… more so, even, given that she has to do it alone.

I really liked her as a character, and understood her empathy for her near-sister Aurora. She was crazy to go… but it was so true to her stubbornness that I have to just smile and root her on… while staring on in horror. A great kickoff to the series. As the first book, I can imagine Dirty Wings reading like an increase in stakes… and a revelation about Cass and Maia’s journey.

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About A Girl by Sarah McCarry

A great conclusion to the trilogy; it’s the last both in publishing and internal chronology. Tally, our heroine, is in the summer before college.

The book starts off jarringly; it’s in Tally’s voice. She’s SO busy letting us know how smart she is with her word choices and casual brilliance that it’s offputting… which, matches the reaction the strangers in her life have to her. Her family and close friend all know her well and put up with (or are charmed) by her positions, vocabulary and diction, which are strong and confident.

Tally’s tale picks up a generation after Aurora and “Aunt Beast” grew up in Cass and Maia’s shadows in All Our Pretty Songs; she’s raised by Raoul (who gets modest screen time), his husband (who doesn’t), and Aunt Beast in a modern mixed family of choice. She’s an orphan daughter of Aurora (she knows), but it’s complicated. She’s surrounded by love, but with both her Mom absent and Father unknown… she’s unsure of herself, emotionally, no matter how she erects intellectual bulwarks.

After the awkward first chapter (once Tally’s not trying to impress us, it seems), the book reads smoothly. The magic is much less metaphorical this time around; it’s more than creepy dreams and bad choices. The overt magic extends Tally’s time on her journey… and, given how straightforwardly she tackles things to start, it was probably necessary to shortcut her having a frank talk and heading home a day later. (I mean, that’s just about how the book ends… but there’s a lot that goes on first because she and others are all being manipulated in the meantime.)

It’s a great book. Tally carries the story and drives everything–and she has the personality and perseverance to make it an interesting journey, even if it’s less obviously perilous than Cass and Maia’s journey. She’s also flawed, but that’s easy to forgive in the moment, and an important component of her authenticity.

Interestingly, her boyfriend Shane is important… but he’s relegated almost to a frame story. It’s a quirky thing to notice afterwards.

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Dirty Wings by Sarah McCarry

This is almost YA-fiction, though the turn to drugs and dissolution seems much stronger than in the other YA I’ve encountered.

It’s a tale of Maia and Cass, girls at the end of high school. Maia is a great pianist, through some combination of very hard work and innate gift. Cass is trouble–but worldly, experienced, wise trouble that’s mind blowing to Maia’s stunted upbringing.

The story is told in two halves: now and then. The now chapters are mostly a road trip down the west coast on limited resources. The then chapters begin with Maia and Cass crossing paths and falling into each other’s orbits. There’s less than a year between the now and then… but a world of change. It’s not static either–in then chapters we see Maia’s engagement with the world beyond her piano bench and isolation, steadily growing more worldly, more open to experience. In the now chapters, we see her live out those changes, embrace Cass, rough living, and the quest for new experiences.

The path that’s been planned for her by her parents and her piano teacher at the start is so very different from the path she’s on at the end. Like her parents and piano teacher, I’m a bit horrified at where she winds up–but I empathize with her desire to chart her own path, feed her own desires.

The characters around the fringes are interesting. Her mom was pretty horrible throughout, but her Dad so blossomed on setting foot in New York that I wished he’d been more a part of the story prior. (More in an “I wish he’d been more involved, for Maia”, not an “I wish the author had inserted him more” sense.) Her Piano teacher, Oscar, is more complex from the start–and his own life’s deviation, revealed late in the now, explains the experiences that taught him the wisdom he displays throughout.

Jason… I only ever really saw through Cass’s eyes. The chance that delivers him… it was a cruel final blow to my hopes that they’d find a way to blend the worlds. I thought–hoped–that together in New York… it was a compelling dream.

In the end, she did a great job of getting me tangled up in two strong characters. I’d wish them well, but that’s not the trajectory they’re on as the book closes.