Review by Booklist Review
The tiny town of Penobscot, Maine, could be unkind: harsh winters, struggling businesses, and a strong gossipy streak. The Murphy family was subject to one of the town's cruelest rumors: that young Margaret Murphy, when she was four years old, witnessed (or caused, depending on who was gossiping) a fatal accident while playing an innocent childhood game. Margaret was little enough that she couldn't work the icebox latch but old enough to know she should have told someone about where her neighbor, Agnes, was hiding. Years later, Margaret's guilt has taken on a life of its own, a shadowy creature forever tied to her and sworn to make her life miserable. Oshetsky (Chouette, 2021) adds a hint of the supernatural to this exploration of destiny, unrequited affection, and the transformative power of guilt. They are especially skilled at outlining the tension between Margaret's deeply complex inner life and her quiet, often taciturn exterior. This haunting and evocative novel will resonate with readers of Richard Russo, Lionel Shriver, and Markus Zusak.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
When an innocent game goes awry, one young girl is left dead and the other doomed to a fantastical haunting in the restrained and unsettling latest from Oshetsky (Chouette). The survivor, Margaret, now a teen, writes her confession several years later while holed up in a motel room near Niagara Falls. "I've been telling made-up stories for so long that the unadorned truth feels ugly and ungrammatical," she writes, revealing that she accidentally locked her friend Agnes in a cooler in their Maine hometown. Ever since Agnes's death, Margaret has been haunted by Poor Deer, a devilish figment of her imagination with "mossy yellow nubs" for teeth, who seems determined to remind her of her sins. In chapters alternating between Margaret's confession and omniscient sketches of her past, what unfolds is a fascinating and often painful tale of a tortured childhood. A child whose strangeness can be taken as innocent or sinister, she is raised by her aunt and a mother resentful of her "little changeling" daughter. Her only friend is an old man in the woods who trains messenger pigeons, and she writes tales in a cypher intelligible only to herself. Oshetky handles Margaret's monstrous manifestation with a delicate touch and infuses her daily life with a muted eerieness. Readers will be captivated by Margaret's beautifully weird search for atonement. Agent: Alexa Stark, Writers House. (Jan.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A terrible mistake burdens an isolated child with a bossy, hot-breathed conscience/companion. Oshetsky follows a well-received debut, Chouette (2021), with another odd, child-driven, animal-haunted narrative, this time the dark fairy tale of Margaret Murphy, who, as a 4-year-old, is implicated in the death of her friend Agnes Bickford. "Poor Deer" is the phrase Margaret overhears--and misspells--as her widowed mother, Florence, and Aunt Dolly sympathize over the suffering Agnes' mother, Ruby, must be enduring at the loss. But for sensitive Margaret, the term converts into an actual hooved, yellow-teethed, articulate presence, the externalization of all her childish feelings and unanswered questions about Ruby, Agnes, and herself: the guilt, grief, sin, and sorrow. "Her hooves kick out at my shins. She nips and hurts…She demands justice. She never forgives." The story opens as 16-year-old Margaret begins writing--at Poor Deer's insistence--her confession, looking back to her younger self. On the fateful day of Agnes' death, the two girls had played in the mud of a flooded school yard, then in a toolshed. As part of a game, Agnes had climbed into a disused cooler from which Margaret couldn't release her, leaving Ruby to find the body and Florence to lie about her daughter's whereabouts. The resulting backwash of blame and pent-up emotion is intensified by the Murphys' Catholicism. As Margaret loses an infected finger to amputation, so the book's overt symbolism and spiritual references come to the fore: heaven and the devil; the mark of Cain; ritual and self-harm. Oshetsky delivers this sad, child's-eye-perspective morality tale in desultory fashion, leavened by a whimsical, occasionally comic tone, leading to a see-saw effect. Redemption, ultimately, is not ruled out. A fanciful parable of coming to terms with psychological damage inflicted on a child's psyche. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
