Push: a novel

When the A-Z Wednesday Challenge rolls around each week, I usually post about a book I have read, but not today. Instead, for this week's letter P, I'm highlighting a book I hope to read soon: Push: a novel, by Sapphire. You may have noticed all the media buzz about the new movie Precious.....that movie is based on this novel. It's apparently a slim read, but packs an emotional powerhouse of a punch. One reviewer on Amazon warned that it is "not a fun book" and said she felt like taking a bath after reading it, she felt she had waded through so much mud. She also said it's a book she'll never forget.

Here's the novel's description: Claireece Precious Jones endures unimaginable hardships in her young life. Abused by her mother, raped by her father, she grows up poor, angry, illiterate, fat, unloved and generally unnoticed. So what better way to learn about her than through her own, halting dialect. That is the device deployed in the first novel by poet and singer Sapphire. "Sometimes I wish I was not alive," Precious says. "But I don't know how to die. Ain' no plug to pull out. 'N no matter how bad I feel my heart don't stop beating and my eyes open in the morning." An intense story of adversity and the mechanisms to cope with it.

I don't mind reading books that are disturbing and have been on the library's waiting list for this novel for weeks. I hope to read it before seeing the movie.