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Janet Fitch
(Little, Brown; $24.99)
It's been a long wait for another Janet Fitch creation and worth every minute of itIf you were a fan of White Oleander in either book or movie form, you won’t want to miss Fitch's next gem. In Paint It Black, Fitch takes us back to the LA '80s punk scene and introduces us to Josie Tyrell, teen runaway/junkie/model who is locked into a soul mate relationship with the dark and talented art student, Michael Faraday. In the opening scenes, Josie's relationship is starting to unravel which the reader discovers way before Josie does. Everything pivots off kilter in Josie's world the minute she picks up the phone and is greeted by the Losa Angeles County Coroner’s office requesting that she come to the morgue to identify Michael's body. The balance of Paint it Black is about big themes – love, betrayal, loss and grief. The reader sits by Josie’s side and steps through each painful step of a deepening grief as helpless as a reader as a human is in real life. Fitch is beyond gifted in her writing, the intensity of the emotions so raw that you both can’t keep reading and at the same time can’t put the book down.
Paint it Black is one of the most powerful, raw, intense and tightly written works of fiction to debut in a long time. Fitch is wonderfully talented, worth waiting for and has a focus and handle on life issues that eludes many a writer and most people. This is, hands down, my fiction pick of the year.
To order this book online click here.
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