Dancing at the Pity Party – Tyler Federġ5. Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute – Talia Hibbertġ7. The Taking of Jake Livingston – Ryan DouglassĢ1. We Weren’t Looking to Be Found – Stephanie KuehnĢ7.

Like Ostow, I read it as a teenager and it really is quintessential true crime.Ģ9. I think if you are at all interested in Manson, you should definitely give Helter Skelter a go.

I have read other novels-in-verse and have found them satisfying, but this one just didn’t pack the emotional punch I was expecting. I wanted to empathize with Melinda, clearly she’s had a rough go, but it was hard to really care about any of these characters given that the prose was so fragmented. I loved the idea of the book and anyone familiar with Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders will certainly recognize the parallels. Until she is called upon to participate in a horrific crime.įamily is written in verse and this might, perhaps, be one of its problems. To be in Henry’s orbit is to be chosen, doused in his special light. It’s all free love and shared meals and music. no “i”.”įor a time, Melinda finds relief from her life at the ranch. there are no parents, no ownership, no ego. The rules are simple: “everything belongs to everyone. He scoops Melinda up and whisks her back to the ranch, where he lives with a bunch of other misfits. He finds Melinda, “a heap of bones, a tangle of stringy hair, collapsed on a sticky park bench” and offers her what she seems to desperately need. Melinda doesn’t use capitals for anything, unless she’s talking about Henry. mother, watching you drown, doing nothing as you drifted, as the current pulled you to a place where whiskey breath and roaming hands couldn’t reach. It meant mother, treading water, understanding that jack was not your uncle, not your father, not your family. Now meant “uncle jack” and whiskey breath and roaming hands and squeaking bedsprings. She’s run away from home, leaving behind an emotionally distant mother and a sexually abusive “uncle jack.” When she was twelve, Micol Ostow’s father gave her a copy of the book and it is clearly the inspiration for her YA novel Family.įamily is the story of seventeen-year-old Melinda Jensen. In 1974, Vincent Bugliosi’s (with help from Curt Gentry) account of the events, Helter Skelter, was published. Manson was a wannabe singer and leader of a cult-like group. were murdered by people tied to Charles Manson. In the summer of 1969, seven people in L.A.

Family by micol ostow