Enjoyed reading this. A fast, moderately light read with good character development and an interesting story that unfolded gradually. ( )

I found this on Hoopla, not knowing anything about it. The narrator, Linda, has the form of synesthesia in which hearing words produce tastes. In this book adult Linda explains many things--her relationship with her best friend Kelly and the thousands of letters they have written, her difficult relationship with her mother and grandmother, her good one with her father, her wonderful one with her great uncle "Baby" Harper, and how her synethesia has affected so much of her life--struggling in school, having conversations, watching TV--until she discovered that smoking and alcohol can both take the edge off "the incomings" as she refers to these tastes. She has always felt "different" in her town of Boiling Springs, NC, and has never quite been able to sort out what part of her history and herself is the cause. She explores that here.

I think the narrator (Jennifer Ikeda) did a great job with the narration, because "the incomings" in the text could make it hard to follow, but she does a great job with a tone for the parentheticals and I was able to focus on the sentence itself. It very much gave me an idea about how someone with this ability could struggle in school and life, as Linda often has.

For me, the most interesting thing about this book was the character of Baby Harper, Linda's gay librarian great uncle and great friend. This book was published in 2010 and this character reminded me so much of Uncle Root in [book:The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois|51183428] (published 2021). Is this a trope in southern lit? A coincidence? An homage? Did every southern girl growing up in the 70s/80s have a gay great uncle? Obviously there are differences (Harper a librarian, Root a retired professor), and a few things that would be spoilers. The stories are very different. But their roles in these books are both very similar in relation to the main characters. ( )

Loved this book! A coming of age story with skeletons scattered throughout. ( )

Subtle and gorgeous, a warm-hearted sleight-of-hand. ( )

4.3 Delicate and inevitable, Truong's second effort is a worthy follow-up to a promising debut. Ringing prose and supreme equanimity outweigh the slightly unlikely, though fascinating, characters and plot. Worth it for synesthesia and effective suspension of race. ( )