Young God
Katherine Faw Morris, 2014
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
208 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374534233
Summary
Meet Nikki, the most determined young woman in the Carolina hills.
She’s determined not to let the expectations of society set her future; determined to use all the limited tools at her disposal to shape the world to her will; determined to preserve her family’s domination of the local drug trade despite the fact that her parents are gone. Nikki is thirteen years old.
Opening with a death-defying plunge off a high cliff into a tiny swimming hole, Young God refuses to slow down for a moment as it charts Nikki’s battles against the powers that be. Katherine Faw Morris has stripped her prose down to its bare essence—certain chapters are just a few words long—resulting in an electric, electrifying reading experience that won’t soon be forgotten.
She quickly gets to the core of Nikki, her young heroine, who’s only just beginning to learn about her power over the people around her—learning too early, perhaps, but also just soon enough, if not too late.
Evoking the staccato, telegraphic storytelling style of James Ellroy but with the literary affect of a young Denis Johnson and a fierce sense of place worthy of Flannery O’Connor or Donna Tartt, Morris is a debut novelist who demands your attention—and Nikki is a character who will cut you if you let your attention waver. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1983-84
• Where—Northwest part of Carolina, USA
• Education—M.F.A, Columbia University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Katherine Faw Morris was born in northwest North Carolina. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two pit bulls. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[I]n this young girl’s world, times are tough and drugs provide the only means for making a lucrative living..... The setup is promising, but all the characters remain two-dimensional.... Morris has kept her heroine at arm’s length, and therefore she, and the book as a whole, devolves into a slick romanticism of poverty, youth, and violence.
Publishers Weekly
A bleak novel of poverty and drugs in rural North Carolina, reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor but without a redemptive vision. At the center of the action is 13-year-old Nikki, whose mother dies at the beginning of the novel..... Morris writes brilliantly in short, spasmodic chapters, but her vision borders on despair.
Kirkus Reviews
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