Burn Our Bodies Down

Burn Our Bodies Down

YA chiller
"...Sometimes I even get out the door, never mind that I'm only
seventeen, never mind another year of school on the horizon. But then
I hear it--Nobody but you and me. Like a curse we can't shake. So I
stay with Mom, because she's all I have, because she says this is
where I belong, and maybe it's spite or maybe it's love but I really
can't tell them apart anymore."
My older daughter, Amber, can really pick an excellent scary
book or movie. She picked that knack up in first grade. She was
analyzing The Shining when the rest of her class was swooning over
Junie B. Jones. (In my defense I'd just brought my third baby home
after a surgical delivery and was having trouble getting by on two
hours of sleep per night). When she heard of my Halloween project for
this blog she was quick to offer suggestions. Rory Power's Burn Our
Bodies Down topped the list.
Margot, Power's protagonist, lives with her Mom in a run down
apartment in a town that has seen better days. As far back as she can
remember it's just been the two of them. And Mom is a piece of work.
Even the most basic survival skills--budgeting, meal planning--elude
her. As far as parenting, she alternates between emotional
manipulation and abandonment. Margot basically raises herself.
One of the things that really bothers Margot is the size of her
family. She really wants siblings, cousins, grandparents, and a sense
of shared family narrative. It's a subject she's learned to avoid
with mommy dearest. But one day she finds a photograph with the phone
number of her mother's mother, a woman who invites her to visit and
tells her she can call her Gram.
Margot's arrival in Phalene, the town her mom grew up in, is
quite eventful. Her grandmother's corn is on fire. In the middle of
it all is the corpse of a girl in an old fashioned dress who looks
just like her. Before she's even set foot in Gram's house she's being
questioned by the police.
And Gram isn't anything like Margot envisioned her. She lies to
the police. She refuses to answer Margot's questions. And she leads
a very strange life in a home in the middle of mutant crops that seem
both alive and dead at the same time.
Could Margot be in even more peril with her grandmother than
with her mother? Is it already too late to escape whatever it is her
teenage and very pregnant mother ran away from?
If you're anything like me you'll find the ending both logically
congruent and astounding.
So how about you pick up the book and see if you're a lot better
than me at picking up and interpreting the clues?
On a purrrsonal note, my Goodwill run was quite a disappointment. I
couldn't find a single thing I wanted. I went to Hannaford and bought
two big bags of Halloween candy to make up goodie bags for the non
student workers at my dining job. Then I threw in two tubes of
Pringles and a big candy bar for me. Tonight, home alone with Tobago,
I'm going to pair them with a beer and the next book on Amber's list
to have myself a little party. (Jules)
And cat treats for me. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to the Wells workers who are simply the
best.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway


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