This little novella is made much more lovely by the fact that I recently read LaValle's The Devil in Silver, which stars an older Lucretia, or Loochie. Knowing the origins of the knit hat with the blue pompoms is touchingly sad. This is an excellent story, with an incredible emphasis on female friendship that reminds me of the tenacity of friendship in Hendrix's My Best Friend's Exorcism. Although, this one is much sadder. Recommended.

Children who grew up in the suburbs learn to climb trees. Kids from Queens learn to climb fire escapes.This short companion piece to The Devil In Silver is an origin story of sorts for Loochie, one of that novel's most compelling characters. Here, we meet her at age 12, just before her years of institutionalization begin, and follow her on an urban katabasis, Dante-like, into a hallucinatory afterlife-limbo in pursuit of her terminally ill friend Sunny. On her trail are the Kroons, a family of c...

Well, it's more like a 2.5 stars for me... “Being young didn’t protect anyone. Horrors came for kids, too.” “It’s amazing what a person can do when her life depends on it”. I don’t think this book is for me and that is sad because while I was reading the summary I thought it had a good concept and it seemed like a great read… This is the story of Lucretia (Loochie) and her friend Sunny. They are both 12 year-old girls that are best friends forever. Sunny has been fighting a cancer and couldn’t

I loved this early look at a young Loochie

Twelve-year-old Lucretia is force to celebrate her birthday without her best friend, Sunny, who is away receiving cancer treatments. When she returns, Lucretia has saved a piece of cake for her and they plan a party just for them. However, Sunny is kidnapped by some zombie-like creatures in the apartment above Looch's. Lucretia sets out to save her friend only to find herself in a world that is like a spoiled copy of her own.I wanted to like this novella. I liked the metaphor for illness and the...

The opening paragraph hooks you in successfully, it starts off intriguingly and then gathers momentum the pace does not back down it becomes a see and feel adventure. The author successfully places you into an eerie sense of place with strange occurrences and creepy characters. It starts of with the main protagonist view on being a twelve year old that’s not quite blossomed as much as she wished. She expresses hows shes not fortunate like other girls who are showing more like a woman’s body. She...

There are several books in the world that are suppose to help children come to terms with death. Usually they concern the death of a pet or sibling, sometimes a friend. When I was child, and even as a adult, they usually missed. At one part there was something that felt fake about must of them, almost forced. That isn't really that surprising.But if I had read this when I was a child, a teen, it would have changed that image of those types of books.Lucretia is dealing with the illness of her fri...

"Being young doesn't protect you, horrors come for kids, too"It took forever to get to this book, and it's one of the few novellas I have read that went as fast as it did. I've never read this author before, so his writing style was new to me. The story just jumped right into it, now pretense or build up, it just went right to it.Now this is a very different kind of book for me, a bit of a magical realism, yet very different. Loochie is a kid who doesn't realize that the world is kind of harsh;

Originally posted at Paperback Wonderland."Being young doesn’t protect you. Horrors come for kids, too."Okay, why have I never heard of Victor LaValle? If the rest of his work is like this novella, it should be on prominent display in every bookshop, and library, and topping lists everywhere.I started this book expecting a horror story with all the trappings of the genre. Instead I was taken on a vivid stroll through the life of a little girl from Queens and how she was dealing with her best fri...

I'm an adult who occasionally enjoys reading young adult fiction with a strong fantasy element. Mainstream fantasy for adults sometimes has too much emphasis on either warfare or romance for my taste, when I'm really just looking for escapism in a well-crafted fantasy setting. Lucretia and the Kroons looked like it would be exactly the sort of ebook I'd love but I found myself plodding through it to get to the end. The story follows a pretty common fantasy theme. A kid who is dealing with the fe...

I felt this novella was a bit scattered. It contained many elements that didn’t flow well together. Each piece was well done and imaginative, but together, they were clunky and disjointed.

This novella takes you into the world of twelve-year old Lucretia Gardner - Loochie to her friends. Content spoiler: (view spoiler)[underage smoking, monsters (hide spoiler)].The narrative begins with birthday party drama. When Loochie is distracted missing her sick friend, her Mother must drag her to the party where three self-absorbed acquaintances await uninterestedly.Loochie's elder brother Louis tells her why the top floor apartment has been boarded up for years. A family called the Kroons

This novella, which serves as a prequel to LaValle's latest novel The Devil in Silver, is about Lucretia ("Loochie") Granger, a girl who lives with her mother in an apartment in Queens, NY at the turn of the millenium. Her 12th birthday party was ruined by three mean girls from her school who were unwanted guests invited by Loochie's mother. Her best friend Sunny, a girl who lives in the same building, was undergoing treatment for cancer at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis at tha...

A really nice story about death, pain and friendship.Contains mild swearing/adult words (whore, bastard, crackhead) as well as smoking and really creepy villains with deteriorating bodies.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group for providing me an eARC to review.I tried reading this novella once before and abandoned it due to confusion. I am happy that I decided to give this story another go, but again did get lost a bit while reading. I just don't think my mind does well with fantasy and/or anything supernatural. At the end of the story, when I discovered what that part meant, I was okay. I knew that it was a coping mechanism of some sort.This is a book about fierce friendship.

This is aimed at young adults, but it tells the sort of universally appealing story everyone should be able to be moved by. Primordial fear, loss, grief, and hope are universal human narratives and constants, so it's hard for me to see how can you not be moved by this short story. The author delivers all these masterfully.

My first Victor years ago and I loved it.

*I got this book from Netgalley for review*When I saw that the genre is Horror,my first instinct was to avoid reading it.Even as a child I used to avoid reading Goosebumps (thought the reason can be attributed more to a rather insensitive beast who took great pleasures in terrifying his little sister..!).Anyway,I am going off the topic..Hey! No, I am NOT ! By now most of you think I am crazy..! Well, I am not! You see,this book fantastically reminded me of such incidents:Older brother narrating

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)Victor LaValle's Lucretia and the Kroons is a frustrating reading experience, because it's full of great ideas that are mostly handled poorly, or at the least with poor material added to either side of the great idea, so that what could've been a tight little alt-horror tale instead became a rambling thing...

I adore Victor LaValle. And I wish this novel was much longer.That is all.