All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

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Bryn Greenwood: I’ve tried to focus on talking about the issues that I think are at the heart of the book, most especially consent. People frequently look only at Wavy and Kellen’s relationship, but there are so many other places in the book where the question of Wavy’s ability and right to consent or to refuse consent comes into play. So many adults want to “do what’s right” by forcing her to do or be something other than what she is. As much as we may not approve of the choices Kellen makes, he’s one of the only adults in the book who doesn’t violate Wavy’s consent. It’s important to me to get people talking about that. Wavy is the daughter of a violent man, womanizer and drug dealer, and a drug addicted mother with deep emotional, existential and psychological problems, who transmits to her daughter her fears regarding food and germs.

At the end of the book we could not judge Wavy and Kellen, we just accepted it and all The Ugly and Wonderful Things. Every chapter it jumped around to a different narrator and POV. Now, normally this would drive me batshit, but the way Greenwood did it here just really worked for me. Until then I hadn’t known the stars had names. Arm extended, finger pointing, Wavy traced out shapes above her head, as though she were guiding the movements of the stars. A conductor directing a symphony.ALL THE UGLY AND WONDERFUL THINGS is a romance between a twenty-four-year-old man and a thirteen-year-old girl. Wavy is the daughter of abusive, mentally ill meth dealers. She's shunted from home from home for a while, from a grandmother who loves her but dies, to an aunt who doesn't love her and is afraid of the influence Wavy will have over her own girls, before being returned to her completely unfit parents.

Wavy’s life is messed up. Kellan is one of the only good things in the whole thing. I completely rooted for these two characters. Let's pretend you have a little sister. Say she is 12 or 13. There's this big older guy she's been hanging out with lately, and you know he's at least 26 years old. Grandma put it in the suitcase. Wavy took it out. Mom put it in. Wavy took it out. It was the only toy Wavy had. “Nothing belongs to you,” she told me once when Leslie and I fought over a favorite Barbie that later disappeared.Others can't stand violence of any kind and I can read about torture and disembowelment and not even pause in my quest to get to the bottom of the Skinny Pop bag. At lunch, Wavy sat at the table, but didn’t eat anything. Same thing at dinner and breakfast the next morning. But he is 25 for god’s sake and I can’t reconcile with that fact that he has sex with a child. And no matter how neglected, alone, unhappy, abused or mature the heroine is, some boundaries should never be crossed, ever. Especially if you’re sending out a message to a wide audience including teenagers. Wavy wasn’t in her bed, so I ran downstairs alone. I found Dad in the kitchen with the trash can lid in one hand and his briefcase in the other. I’d never been in the kitchen that late. In the day it was a warm, sunny place, but behind Dad, the basement door stood open and dark, like the mouth of a monster.

Kellen and Wavy’s love from a distance would seem perfect—one we’d all strive to obtain. It’s a deep love; a respectful love; a faithfully sound love; a genuine love that’s complete and equally reciprocated. Problem is that pesky illegal and highly immoral age gap. Inappropriate usage of drugs - such as cocaine - in front of children ( putting a spoon up their nose starts to look like it might be the next step to growing up) An emotionally resonant novel with an unlikely cast of characters you won’t soon forget. Bryn Greenwood’s unique voice and her understanding of human nature offer an amazing tale of family, loss, and love that’s as unpredictable and inspiring as love itself. If we could give this more than five stars we most definitely would. But, since we can't this gets another five ***** sparkly stars from me! My sister, Brenda and I decided to do another sister read and this time around we chose ALL THE UGLY AND WONDERFUL THINGS by BRYN GREENWOOD. What an extremely good choice we made in reading this one together. This is by far the best book we have read in quite some time and we have read some pretty good books lately. Wavy is the daughter of a man who runs the meth lab. Her circumscribed world is woefully bereft of anything wonderful; her short life has been a daisy chain of abuse, abandonment, and hopelessness. When we first meet her, she is just a child, already deeply scarred by mistreatment at the hands of her drug-addled mother and drug-producing father. An unlikely rescuer appears in the shape of Kellen, the hired muscle at the lab, an over-sized misfit just as damaged as Wavy - but more than twice her age. Wavy is so starved for love and affection that her heart opens to Kellen, and Kellen cannot help but enter into the relationship she offers him.

Was it all completely realistic? Maybe not. But in the end this is a fiction book and by remembering that it helped me to relax and just appreciate the story. Are my beliefs changed by what I read? Not really. Maybe this sounds strange and I don't really know how to explain what I mean, but I just feel a bit different after reading this.