Messes to Clean

Sarah Weinman gets it right with her brief comments about Carolyn Wall’s recently released novel, Sweeping Up Glass:

What a gorgeous, moving, heartbreaking book, and it might be hard to believe that it’s Wall’s debut novel, but it is. Olivia Harker is tough but very much a woman, struggling to raise her baby grandson, care for a mother who never much loved her, come to grips with how little love she has had at all. But a series of events force her to realize that she does, in fact, have a measure of control over calamities and doesn’t have to stave them off. But will she take that stand? Here lies the power of Wall’s prose, making the reader care desperately about Olivia’s fate.

I heartily concur. And so will you.