Five Books to Read Right Now to Travel the Country While Stuck at Home
et in rural Michigan, Julie Buntin’s Marlena indulges in its own ugliness, taking on adolescent friendship in a way that skirts the clichés of the young adult genre. Buntin intertwines the stories of two characters: the titular Marlena and Cat, two friends whose relationship is marred by substance abuse, poverty, mania and an untimely death. It is a fictional joyride, but also a sharp portrait of life in certain pockets of the Midwest where meaningless terms like “flyover country” have stood in place of real understanding.