Long Bright River

 

Long Bright River by Liz Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sold as a mystery, this is more of a study of sisterhood, one sister who happens to be drawn into a mystery because she is a patrol cop and is worried her missing sister may be the next serial killer's victim. The Philadelphia neighborhood where Mickey patrols and grew up in becomes the most important character. It is a study of how the working poor, beaten down and suspicious of those who keep them down, develop a pride of their own and can shame anyone trying to get out. Interestingly, it is more socially acceptable to "get out" by developing a drug habit than by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. When drugs are so prevalent, there develops a new sort of equilibrium where the law tolerates some behaviors to concentrate on others. Where is that line? When drugs becomes so prevalent and accepted, how do you not get drawn in? How do you get out? Who's fault is it when you succumb? When does the law no longer become responsible for socially accepted behavior? what about family? Do you cut them off, take away rights, or just make sure they get clean needles? Obviously it raises a lot of interesting questions but I did not like the physical formatting of the book. I thought the lack of quotation marks added to the interiority of the novel (Is she speaking or thinking). But I'm still trying to figure out the reason for the breaks that follow every third paragraph or so. Wasn't a change of perspective, passing of time, or even new thought sometimes. Made the novel a bit choppy for me.

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This was the secret I learned that day: None of them want to be saved. They all want to sink backward toward the earth again, to be swallowed by the ground, to keep sleeping.  There is hatred on their faces when they are roused from the dead.

When, at bedtime, he falls asleep on me, I keep holding him.  Like I'm applying pressure to a wound.  Keeping the blood inside him.