Us Fools

Starred review from August 1, 2024
Two peculiar sisters navigate the pain and beauty of growing up in rural America. In the 1980s, Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised by parents Henry and Sylvia on an Illinois farm. The backdrop is rather mundane, but the family is anything but. Henry and Sylvia, sexually affectionate to a fault, spend much of their time in the throes of passion while their daughters pore over books of ancient mythology, feminist philosophy, and other esoterica. They refer to themselves as "junk kids" and partake in strange intellectual rituals "just as the classics had taught us to do." Jo, the elder sister, was born "a nine-pound skeptic," prone to rebelling against anything and everything. She speaks in an unusually erudite manner, spouting baroque truisms--"We are surrounded by America with its orgies of barbarism"--in between mental breakdowns and general hell-raising. Bernie, meanwhile, yearns to escape the suffocating poverty of the rural Midwest but only ends up a moderate distance away, at a university in Chicago. In spite of her attempts to sever her past (and the ever-present threat of mental illness, which has plagued so many Fareown women before her), she notes, "I would never escape the web that was my family. I would never break from that group of individuals facsimiled for America." Her aching to understand herself, her family history, and, of course, her beloved sister takes her across the country, a mystical and darkly humorous voyage rife with bizarre interactions and apt cultural references. Lange's debut novel is a refreshingly sardonic take on the decaying ideal of the American dream, with an anti-capitalist tilt. At the end of it all, this is not just a brilliant bildungsroman: Like the classics that the Fareown sisters quote ad infinitum, it's a lush, uncanny mythology itself. A wonderfully shrewd, surreal, and comical odyssey through a crumbling American landscape.

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July 8, 2024
In Lange’s resonant debut, a woman reflects on how she and her sister struggled to survive on their family’s Illinois farm during the mid-1980s recession. At nine, Bernadette Fareown and her impulsive 11-year-old sister, Joanna, call themselves “junk kids.” Their family’s homestead has seen better days, and the mood is glum, especially after Jo’s attempted suicide following her diagnosis of severe scoliosis. With their parents unable to pay the bills, Bernadette “watched my family fall apart, over and over.” Bankrupt, they flee to a Chicago apartment, where Bernadette pursues her dream of a formal education while Jo’s behavior becomes increasingly reckless. Bernadette’s recounting of the family’s history follows her recent trip to Alaska to see Jo, who is pregnant and has been recently released from a mental hospital. Lange’s lucid story digs deep into the bonds of family and the alliances that are formed and retained across time and despite changing circumstances. Readers will be captivated. Agent: Martha Wydysh, Trident Media Group.