Status Updates From Blood Family: Does the Past...

Am enjoying this book very much. Fine is definitely one for telling in snatches: short chapters in "The Tulip Touch," sort of unified narrative short story collection in "Step by Wicked Step," and in here she gives multiple alternating POVs (some one-offs, many repeating, including Eddie/Edward, the dominant voice) that go can go for just a page or so or longer, depending. It makes for a fast, polyphonic narrative.

I’ve been meaning to read this book and I’ve been meaning to read “our town“, but I didn’t know which I was going to do first. I flipped both open earlier this evening, to see which one caught me, and the dedication on this one decided me right off. “In memoriam Fred McFeely Rogers.” Perfect.

Thing is, we’ve been showing our kids old Mr. Rogers episodes from time to time. Stella even asked for a few of them, and it just reminds me how much I love him. I’ve never seen anyone being cynical about Mr. Rogers. The closest I’ve ever come is that great scene in “Prophet” a few weeks back, and even that wasn’t especially mean or cynical.

How strangely perfect. Sort of a procedural type thing about a kid who was captive in squalid circumstances for years with his mother, and is now in foster care. His POV and that of all the people who work with him. Very gritty and frank, but he has also been “saved“ by a fictionalized version of Mr. Rogers that he watched on old tape cassettes, so he had this educational little safe place in his life.