Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis

5/5 Stars

Before the end of the second page you’ll know whether this grotesquely beautiful coming of age story is one you can read.

Penny Wilson wanted a baby of her own in the worst way. That�s what I figure, because she was only supposed to watch me for an hour and a half, and obviously she loved me a little too much. She must have hummed a lullaby, fondled each tiny finger and toe, kissed my cheeks and stroked the down on my head, blowing on my hair like she was making a wish on a dandelion gone to seed. I had my teeth but I was too small to swallow the bones, so when my mother came home she found them in a pile on the living room carpet. The last time my mother had looked at Penny Wilson she�d still had a face. I know Mama screamed, because anyone would have. When I was older she told me she thought my babysitter had been the victim of a satanic cult. She�d stumbled upon stranger things in suburbia.

It wasn�t a cult. If it had been, they would have snatched me away and done unspeakable things to me. There I was, asleep on the floor beside the bone pile, tears still drying on my cheeks and blood wet around my mouth. I loathed myself even then. I don�t remember any of this, but I know it.

Even when my mother noticed the gore down the front of my OshKosh overalls, even when she registered the blood on my face, she didn�t see it. When she parted my lips and put her forefinger inside� mothers are the bravest creatures, and mine is the bravest of all� she found something hard between my gums. She pulled it out and peered at it. It was the hammer of Penny Wilson�s eardrum.

DeAngelis, Camille. Bones & All: A Novel�

Maren is a teenager with a problem she can’t control. She is an eater–a cannibal, a ghoul, a monster–and she was born this way. Her hunger is insatiable, but not constant. Maren feeds on love; she will gobble you up if you show her the smallest bit of affection, bones and all.

On the morning after her 16th birthday, she wakes up alone.

I came down the hall and found a note on the kitchen table:

I’m your mother and I love you but I can’t do this anymore. �