Still Waters - Jennifer Lauck

Advantages: Captivating - surprisingly warm, humourous and uplifting
Disadvantages: None

...who, like me, come to Still Waters cold, it doesn't take long to realise that just prior to this trip to Reno 12-year-old Jenni was pretty much living rough on the streets of California having been virtually abandoned by her stepmother, following her father's death. Arriving at the trailer home of her grandparents in Reno, it seems that life is finally going to improve. But the days of TV and the cocktail hour and simple domesticity are to be short-lived ...
...more in that line, but Still Waters is so far removed from it that I'm tempted to go back and find out. Why doesn't Still Waters qualify for the genre? Mainly because it simply isn't miserable. Lauck doesn't seem to even try to elicit our sympathy. She manages to tell her life quite simply. It hasn't been the best or easiest of lives it's true - but also it isn't the most traumatic or poverty-ridden of existences either. In some ways her experiences, ... Read review