I see. This is how it’s done. In my own writing, I’ve been experimenting with a first person narrator who has an omniscient “in” on the story; here, Mafi executes this perspective with such tenderness and compassion I cried. It loans the whole book this wonderful inclusive tone, the reader becoming a co-conspirator and confidante in the lives of all the protagonists. Mafi has such a keen sense for the interiority of her characters, what they are thinking and hiding and NEEDING, and best of all, she exposes their humanness with such precision their trials cut to the bone.

Where was this book when I was eleven or twelve or thirteen? I want to hand it to all the kids I know, and then to all the adults.