Michele Jacques’s Reviews > Marlena > Status Update

Loved! Beautiful writing. The author captures the vulnerability of teen girls and their need to fit in. The themes of home -- as living things, as security, as stability -- and the yearning for mothers are solid. Marlena's pin, in which she stores drugs (one of the very few things in her life that is constant and reliable), is memorably shaped like a house. The book is a study in grief, in the impact of teenage years