A Country You Can Leave by Asale Angel-Ajani

​A family can be very much like a country. For one thing, it can be difficult to leave. But also…best case scenario, it can provide a sense of belonging and pride, somewhere to be safe, loved, taken care of. At worst…well, it can make for some terrific literature.
That’s what this book is…terrific. Stunning. Awesome.
There are plenty of mother/daughter relationship stories out there and most of it falls prey to cheap sentimentality, triteness, clichés. This novel does none of it, averting every pitfall along the way with expertise of a car race driver…something especially notable for a debut, and resulting in a story that hits all the right notes and then tears the strings out. Bam. Done. Make of it what you will.
This novel is unapologetically unsentimental, unflinchingly visceral, and unorthodoxly about love. Albeit, love – the real thing, the kind that guts and scars.
A most courageous endeavor and a most courageous novel about it.
Don’t make a mistake of dismissing it as just a coming-of-age novel either, although the narrator is sixteen. There’s nothing teen or twee about it.
Lara is a smart kid who has been denied any semblance of a normal life for so long, that she ends up craving it desperately. Alas, with a mother like hers - an embittered émigré, emotionally crippled by childhood abuse, intellectually frustrated well-read pentalingual, promiscuous, alcoholic, daring, wildly unconventional and seemingly comprised of razor blades and edges – normalcy is an impossible thing.
When the two of them come to their most recent temporary landing at the Oasis trailer park in California desert, things at long boil over, all the frustrations, all the resentments, all the misunderstandings.
What a book. What a powerhouse of a book. Absolutely riveting. If you follow my reviews (and you really should ;) ) you know how many books I read and this was a definitive standout among them. The way this author writes, the emotional punches she throws…just wow.
The characters of this book come alive, every wrinkle, every flaw, every aspect of beauty. Especially the main two. Especially the mother. The way the author (who isn’t Eastern European it seems) gets the dark melancholy of the Slavic soul – it’s poetry in motion. Many kudos.
This novel is what looks and hopes for in proper literary fiction. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.