Book Review: The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls

I found the title and cover of this book alluring. I liked the red-flowered background and the interwoven faces. Although parts of the story were disturbing, it was a fairly riveting read. Indeed, I became thoroughly absorbed toward the end, when one character's fate hung in the balance. Even though I don't fit the intended demographic (African-American women), I enjoyed watching the characters navigate hurt and healing.

In The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls, each sister battles personal demons. After their mother died and their father left to evangelize the lost, the girls had to raise themselves. Althea, the oldest, now finds herself incarcerated, along with her husband, for defrauding the community with disaster relief schemes that lined their own pockets. Viola (how do you pronounce that name??) fights an eating disorder. Lillian, traumatized by emotional abuse from her brother, tries to keep everyone safe.

While the sister carried the main thrust of the novel, I was more drawn to the stories of Althea's teenage daughters, Baby Vi (is it V-eye or V-ee?) and Kim. Because of mother-daughter friction, Kim was the whistle-blower that sent her own mother to jail. How does a teenager navigate the weight of guilt for an act that, although driven by spite, brought justice? Kim's character kept me engaged when I might have set the book aside.

The skewed portrayal of the religious characters disturbed me most. Both father and son are ministers, yet act as monsters. The father is distant and more concerned about the souls of others than the care of his own children. Moreover, the son commits horrific abuse against the youngest sister, left in his care during his father's evangelism crusades, yet expresses no remorse for his past actions. The message comes through loud and clear: religious people are hypocrites and the other characters (including a woman incarcerated for supposedly cutting out her boyfriend's tongue) are saints.

Still, the story provided much to ponder: mother-daughter relationships, sister relationships, guilt and forgiveness, and the bonds of family ties. This was a well-written debut novel. It is tricky to tell a story with several narrators, yet Anissa Gray handled the challenge. I won't attempt another book by this author (our perspectives on life are too dissimilar), but fully believe she will write more books.