The Rare Book Review: The Bitch Posse

I recently finished a book that I can’t seem to shake. I can’t even decide what words properly describe it… Tragic? Painful? Bitter truth? It was like watching a train wreck; no matter how badly I wanted to close my eyes, I could not look away.

From the back cover:

“The Bitch Posse is an anthem for friendships that defy society’s approval or disapproval. It’s a novel of secrets, courage, sacrifice, and hope against the odds. It is both a journey back to being a girl on the verge of adulthood, and a journey forward, showing how the events of our past can unearth the best in us today.”

This book knocked me off my emotional track, and while reading it I found it very difficult to maintain my view that life is sunny and bright. While I was drawn to the characters, I had trouble, at the same time, reconciling the choices they made with the hopes I had for them. Quite frankly, the book left me feeling naïve and quite aware of the sheltered life I have led.

I’ve had some experience drinking as a teenager, but the dangers and the potential negative consequences were always crystal clear to me. Whereas I feared alcoholism from an early age, these girls believed themselves above it. Where drugs beyond alcohol were a road I deliberately and carefully avoided, these girls craved anything that would further remove them from the pain that was their everyday lives.

Everything else the story dealt with – the violence in sex and the cutting (I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the cutting) – was so far beyond my personal experience that it felt almost so overblown as to be unreal. At least, there is a little part of me that would like to believe that is the case. I’d like to say that there are stories like this that ONLY exist in fiction.

Yet.

I remember a childhood friend, seeing her arms when we were teenagers, carved and cut as if her cat had used her as a scratching post. More than one friend, actually. There was the girl whose hands had scars, quite readably the initials of a boyfriend. She explained to me once how she would scratch her skin until it bled, making marks just deep enough that the letters showed clearly white on her brown skin. This girl had an abortion at 13 and then had a baby a couple of years later. She was my good friend in childhood, someone I loved deeply. But there was a gulf between the childhood that was mine and the childhood that was hers. We had different lives. We grew up very different people.

There were three of them, tied by a love and friendship that was deep and tragic, yet somehow beautiful. Early in this story, I lost all hope for a happy ending. I could not put the book down, however. I wanted to know where their lives took them. I wanted to know if, in the end, I’d be left with any hope at all.

There was Rennie, the “good student” teen who became a writer. Her path was dreadful – inappropriate sexual relationships, drugs, a non-existent sense of self-worth. The love she felt for her sister’s son in the end, made me feel hopeful. I can’t get past the part of me that doubts, however. How many people would be able to turn their lives around at that point? Mid-30’s. She’s my age. She’s got a lot of years of terrible to overcome.

There was Ami, the “popular girl” turned desperate housewife. It seems she had her moments, but like her parents, functional alcoholics, she seemed to lack the ability to steer herself beyond a course of failed attempts. Her reaction to her baby’s condition was probably the sinking point for any hope I might have held for Ami. I could see turning to drink after your child had died, but the fact that she went that way before the fact of her child’s death made me think that she really didn’t possess the strength that was necessary. It was this character I had the most trouble sympathizing with.

Then there was Cherry, everybody’s “tough girl” who ended up spending most of her adult life in an institution. All the way through the book, as I learned their story, alternating chapters from their teen years to their mid-30s, I wondered why I could admire this girl so much when she had obviously ended up the worst of the three. The last two chapters, which tie up Cherry’s role, answered my question. It was Cherry who loved them all enough to sacrifice her self. Nobody else in their lives had done that for any of them. None of them had parents—stable, grounding forces in their lives—that make people feel capable through the hard times. Cherry gave so that the other two might have a chance at a life that might be more forgiving.

I can’t say that Martha O’Connor has written a story that will have me clamoring to buy her next book. She has, however, crafted a story with an expert hand and a definite skill for storytelling. Not every story has to have a happy ending. This is a truth that I understand. But maybe every story should touch you like this one does… help you see the world through eyes that are not your own.