Kittentits

March 18, 2024
In this chirpy if wearying debut, a 10-year-old white girl seeks friendship and adventure after a tragedy. In 1992 Calumet City, Ill., Molly lives with her dad in the House of Friends, a religious co-op, where she’s homeschooled by an older woman she calls “fat Evelyn.” Two of their fellow residents recently died in a blaze, including a nun whose ghost haunts their “fire-rotted” house. When 20-something Jeanie arrives on a dirt bike and moves in, Molly is immediately taken with the young woman: “right now Jeanie’s the most supernatural thing to me ever.” Jeanie is on the run from her vengeful twin sister (the reasons for this come out later), prompting her to fake her own death by staging a hot-air balloon accident. Molly, knowing Jeanie is still alive, runs away to Chicago to meet up with her pen pal Demarcus, who is Black, for help in tracking Jeanie down. Wilson has a knack for surreal imagery (she describes a cyclorama in Chicago as “a ghost-painted grid with glowing bars and square cells like a prison”). Unfortunately, she leans too often on the puerile insults of the period, including “asstard” (to which she adds “crotchtard” and “kittentits”), and awkwardly attempts to work through racial issues by having Molly say ignorant things and Demarcus call her out (“I can’t tell if you’re racist or just dumb”). In the end, Wilson serves up more fatigue than intrigue. Agent: Kent Wolf, Neon Literary.

April 1, 2024
A fantastical debut novel set against the backdrop of the 1992 World's Fair in Chicago (which, outside these pages, was canceled before it opened). Molly is 10 when a woman named Jeanie comes to live at the "House of Friends: a Semi-Cooperative Living Community of Peace Faith(s) in Action." Molly is immediately smitten with the 20-something ex-con, but their mentor-prot�g� relationship begins in earnest when the grown woman invites the young girl to pull the tampon from her vagina. As Jeanie laughs and runs away, Molly runs after her. "I'm on her heels so fast, my heart banging hard, her badass blood mixed with the scabs under my fingernails. I've never been so happy." From Molly's perspective, her story is about the radical power of being purposefully objectionable. A scene like this is clearly not for the squeamish, but it's far from the worst Wilson has to offer. What really feels like getting punched in the face is the frequency with which Molly and Jeanie use -tard as a suffix. Fucktard, asstard, crotchtard...The profanity and crudeness are hardly noteworthy after Wilson sets the tone with the tampon scene, but this language just feels mean and--worse--pointless. Readers who are not put off by the casual cruelty will find a coming-of-age tale that mixes real pathos with absurdities like a psychic medium in an iron lung and a ghostly pen pal. Molly's desperate need to be seen and respected as a whole person in a world that sees her as a little girl resonates, as does her ambivalent relationship with the mother who died before she was old enough to know her. But, eventually, the narrative begins to sag under the weight of Wilson's cabinet of curiosities. If the title makes you the least bit uncomfortable, this probably isn't for you.

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