Book Review: Such Small Hands

                                                                                   BOOK INFORMATION:                                                                  

Book Title: Such Small Hands

Author: by Andrés Barba, Lisa Dillman

Publishing Date: 2017

Publisher:  Transit Books

Page Count: 112 pages

Source: Purchases at a small bookstores

Shirley Jackson meets The Virgin Suicides in a masterwork from the Spanish writer at the peak of his powers.

Life changes at the orphanage the day seven-year-old Marina shows up. She is different from the other girls: at once an outcast and object of fascination. As Marina struggles to find her place, she invents a game whose rules are dictated by a haunting violence. Written in hypnotic, lyrical prose, alternating between Marina’s perspective and the choral we of the other girls, Such Small Hands evokes the pain of loss and the hunger for acceptance.

Links for purchase: Amazon // Barnes and Noble // Book Depository // Better World Books // Indie Bound

                                                                        MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK:                                                             

Such small hands left me with so many thoughts running through my brain. It really left me with a lot of puzzling thoughts. I wasn’t expecting the creepy orphanage story, but it was so much more than that. It had a deep meaning. I finished this novella about a week ago but I can’t stop thinking about it. 

This novella is set up using very simple short sentence. It uses very complex emotions to weave a beautiful story. The emotion of loneliness was the main emotion expressed in this novel. The story is centered around a child left without parents, without family, and desperate for friends. So you can imagine that loneliness is a huge part of this storyline. I enjoyed reading about the struggle to fit in and the struggle to find companionship. As a foster kid I can identify with how hard it is to feel like you don’t belong as a child. To not have parents to love you, to have to go to a new home and find people. I also can understand the main characters a distrust of those who are different from her. 

In the beginning, we meet a seven year old protagonist as she learns that both of her parents have died as a result of a tragic and unexpected car crash. She is sent to an orphanage / boarding school were she lives with a small group of girls her age. She longs for them to love her and want to be her friend, but they see her as a weird new thing, something that has disturbed their life. They are quite cruel to her at times. Their interactions are tense, there is bullying at times.  Sometimes there is outright violence between these girls. 

The most disturbing part of this book was the game they used to explore themselves. The game sort of was a way to expose trust in their relationships. It was very creepy and escalated to an extremely uncomfortable level. 

This novella is very powerful for such such a small book. It almost seems like a short story than a complete novel. It needed more, it needed more substantial depth. It was definitely interesting to say the least.