marissa pollack’s Reviews > Beth Is Dead > Status Update

Oh golly, this novel…

I wish I could take him back, if only for a moment. If only to tell him that I get it now.
I hated him for turning us into spectacles, but I think all parents see their children as the most interesting people who ever lived. He wrote us as he saw us. Like we were the best story ever told.

This story is everything I wanted, everything I needed—and I’d give anything not to have it.

"He said that Beth was the best of us. And that her loss would stay with his readers forever."
I stew in that answer. It seems selfish and shortsighted to care more about the success of a story than a real person's feelings, and I'd like to think that Beth's life alone would be just as memorable as her death, but underneath my rage, I understand what Dad meant.
None of us will ever forget losing Beth March.

My chest burns like something's been wrenched out of it. I always thought strength could be measured by the space we make for ourselves, like elbowing through a crowd, but Beth did something harder than that. She made space for others.
"I wish we'd had more time," I whisper.

Sunday morning, bright and early: I wake up with a plan. I need to investigate Sallie Gardiner, and with any luck, she and her brother, Ned, will be at church. They're not the kind of people who actually follow the rules of their savior—be kind, help others-but they post pictures of mission trips, and every Sunday they go to services.

:( <— me reading that they don’t truly have a relationship with their Savior

She doesn't hear me. When Beth plays, she enters another world, so concentrated that it's like we're in different rooms or even on different planets. I can almost relate, but when I paint, I draw inspiration from the world around me. Beth seems to draw inspiration from within, as if she was born with an enormous well of creativity inside.
It's disgusting.
And honestly, amazing.

"I'm not sure when I'm coming back, but I'm hoping this'll be one of those really short chapters—"
"Like Stephen King.
*Nothing much happened for the next
two weeks,* I say, quoting an entire chapter from Stephen King's *It,* giving a single sentence the weight of a chapter:
"Just like that." He wraps the four of us into a breathless hug. "Exactly like that."

A lot of stuf happens without Dad.

"Please don't go."
He holds me tight, whispers, "Jo, it's just a chapter."
He's always loved this metaphor. That life is a novel and hardships are only chapters. It's helpful to think of pain this way-to know that someday well turn the page but it doesn't ease the lump in my throat.
"You're a writer. Edit this chapter out."
He lets me go, laughs the way he does when he's reading Vonnegut. "I would if I could."

My stomach lurches. "Homicide? Mom's not a suspect—"
"No," says Kirke. "She's not. But she touched the body. We have to follow procedure."
Jo's voice shoots across the room. "Don't you dare call Beth a body."