Kittentits by Holly Wilson

We read Kittentits by Holly Wilson for my IRL book club. Wilson is a local author, as in, she lives in my town and works at the university where I work. I consider her one of "my" faculty, since she's in one of the departments that I collaborate with regularly. So I'm going to be honest in this review, but I want you all to know that I know Holly and like Holly and we had her come to our book club to talk about the book.

It's 1992 and ten-year-old Molly is struggling. Her mom died when she was a baby, there was a fire at the last place she lived that killed people, including her cousin, and now she's attached herself to an ex-con who lives with her family in a halfway house. I don't want to talk about the rest of the plot of this book, but it is absolutely batshit and I honestly did not know what was happening half the time and the other half, I had no idea what was about to happen. There is a World's Fair in Chicago, a hot air balloon accident, a lady in an iron lung, conjoined twins, lots of tween cursing, and a seance co-hosted by a real ghost. I mean...this review says it all:

Here's the thing. This is not necessarily a book meant for me. Molly's really grieving and there is not a single responsible adult who is helping her out. There are some people who might be offended by the language Molly uses (as a 10-year-old!), but that language was pretty common in the 1990s, at least with a particular class of people in some geographic circles. It felt like this book was a bit of a fever dream to me and I honestly felt like after about 60 or 70 pages, this was just a story Molly was telling herself instead of real events. It hasn't been since The Library at Mount Char that I felt so off-balanced by a book where I couldn't possibly predict what insane thing was going to happen next. 

Kevin Wilson (he of Nothing to See Here fame) wrote in a blurb on the back that Kittentits was "wildly funny" and I have to admit that I found it unbearably sad and not funny at all. I just kept thinking about how Molly really needed just one person to pay attention to her. BUT! I also did not find Nothing to See Here particularly funny, so if that is a book you enjoyed, maybe you would enjoy this one. 

There are many things I did like about this book. Molly's voice is crystal clear. The cursing is creative. I really loved how many interpretations of the book there are.

1. Holly herself said that the events in the book happened in her mind. Molly may not reliably retell the exact details, but the events happened.

2. I think Molly's mom died and then she was involved in a fire and the rest of it is just a dream Molly had. 

Is it weird that I disagree with the author's interpretation of her own book? Maaaaybe. 

It's really an interesting book and I thought we had an interesting discussion about it, so it might be a good book club book option if you're looking for one. Just, you know, with the caveats about the things people might get upset about. 

(Also, does anyone want to get sad that this book - set in 1992 - was tagged as "historical fiction" in Goodreads? The 1990s are historical? I'm basically prehistoric at this point, I guess.)

3.5/5 stars, but 5/5 for having Holly come to our book club

Lines of note:

The VCR's built in and there's a chair and study table, a READ poster with Bo Jackson reading The Old Man and the Sea. (page 34)

Why is this a line of note? Because I talked with Nance about The Old Man in the Sea just last week (the comments of this post). Also, do you remember when I down a rabbit hole about READ posters when I reviewed Dear Fahrenheit 451?

I've been staring at the sky waiting for the mail guy for hours. Now I'm on the porch floor gargling my spit and scissoring my legs. (page 56)

Gosh, do kids even know what it means to be this bored in this day and age?

One day I ask Evelyn where does wind come from and she says the ocean and I say Eff no, I say it blows from the vast flatness of the Great American Plains. (page 62)

Who can possibly know where wind comes from? It is one of those things I will never understand. 

But the camp brochure, the Quaker girls: they wore their hair in beautiful smoothed ponytails and carried what I discovered later were lacrosse sticks. Behind them were other nice-haired girls eating apples, like they had gotten back from picking these apples then spread out these blankets to sit. Their teeth were big and white biting into the apples, two or fewer cavities in those mouths for sure.

In real life I'd never seen girls like this before, all cereal with no sugar, no marshmallows. Girls I knew were white girls like me, all ratted hair and pebbles sunk deep into the skin of our knees. Or Black girls, cleaner but lippy. Not afraid of anything. (page 263)

I loved this description so much. Do you ever remember looking at college brochures and thinking "I do not look like these people"? Or how all wedding photos looked glamourous and perfect and thinking that you would never having those types of photos? But then!! I was in a college brochure! I was in glamourous wedding photos! But I still sort of see myself as the white trash girl with the ratted hair, too.

Then after he's done Bozo the Clown will come out and make jokes to the audience, he'll go down our line and shake each one of our hands. (page 311)

Bozo the Clown recently came up in the comments section of Elisabeth's post. I just did a rabbit on Bozo and learned a lot. Strap in.

The character was created by Alan W. Livingston, and portrayed by Pinto Colvig for a children's storytelling record album and illustrated read-along book set in 1946. The character first appeared on US television in 1949 portrayed by Colvig. After the creative rights to Bozo were purchased by Larry Harmon in 1957, the character became a common franchise across the United States, with local television stations producing their own Bozo shows featuring the character. Local TV stations could put on their own local productions of the show complete with their own Bozo. Harmon bought out his business partners in 1965 and produced Bozo's Big Top for syndication to local television markets not producing their own Bozo shows in 1966, while Chicago's Bozo's Circus, which premiered in 1960, went national via cable and satellite in 1978.

YOU GUYS. THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE BOZO. 

Obviously the one in Chicago was the best and most famous (say the Midwesterner). 

Things I looked up:

Blue Sunshine (page 49) - Blue Sunshine is a 1977 American horror film written and directed by Jeff Lieberman, and starring Zalman King, Deborah Winters, and Mark Goddard. The plot focuses on a series of random murders in Los Angeles, in which the only common link between the perpetrators is a mysterious batch of LSD that they had all taken years prior. There's something about bald people? This film has a cult following and I sort of feel like I want to watch it? But that's crazy because I've watched a total of two movies in the last five years.

ear trumpets (page 58) - I had NO IDEA this was a thing. a tubular or funnel-shaped device which collects sound waves and leads them into the ear. They are used as hearing aids, resulting in a strengthening of the sound energy impact to the eardrum and thus improved hearing for a deaf or hard-of-hearing individual. Ear trumpets were made of sheet metal, silver, wood, snail shells or animal horns. They have largely been replaced in wealthier areas of the world by modern hearing aid technology that is much smaller and less obtrusive, albeit more expensive.

A sound trumpet does not "amplify" sound. It takes the sound power received over a large area and concentrates it into a smaller area. The received sound is louder, but no power has been created in the process. DID YOU ALL KNOW THIS AND NOT TELL ME?

from Cattle Kate to Sheriff Bridger (page 68) - Cattle Kate is a western wear store in Boise, Idaho. It's named after Ella Watson, a woman who was lynched after being accused of cattle rustling, but was probably killed for standing up for herself in a male-dominated world. Sheriff Bridger may or may not be made up.

Wolfgang Paalen fumage (page 182) - Paalen's technique, which Paalen described as “dictation by candle,” in which he would hold a candle flame up to a treated canvas while the paint was still wet, marking the surface with soot; painting with smoke

Paalen, 1937

Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (page 316) - a play by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, written in 1895 and first produced in 1896. The Seagull is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatizes the romantic and artistic conflicts among four characters

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Resident Friend Liesel was here before the fire, a snub-nosed woman who wore braided wicker hats. (page 57)

green pointy hats (page 68)

white paper hats (page 73)

sea captain's hat (page 145)

fat guy wise men with hats like giant red pin cushions on their heads (page 303)

winter hat (page 305)

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Have you ever had an author come to your book club? Do you think this seems like a book you would enjoy?