Betty: The International Bestseller

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Betty is actually Tiffany McDaniel’s mother and the author writes a beautiful ode to her lineage of strong women and an even more beautiful one to her grandfather, a man she never knew but was unusual in his generation for thinking that his daughters could be more than wives and mothers. in any event—i don’t know what is hand-on-bible truth here, or what has been inflated for dramatic effect, but even if everything in this book was conjured up out of the clear blue sky, day after day this world reminds us it is full of horrorshows and people who have survived things others are too lily-livered to even read about. and that, to me, seems insensitive. The last thing I want to praise is McDaniel's voice. Her style is lyrical and beautiful, but also very forward.

The novel follows the eponymous Betty, the third daughter (and fourth child) of the Carpenter family. Betty grows up in Breathed with her 5 siblings in a house from which the previous family disappeared, missing and presumed murdered due to the bullet holes found in the walls. Betty's father is Cherokee, her mother white, yet she is the only child with her father's dark hair and complexion. As a result Betty is the victim of merciless racism from kids at school, townspeople and even her own siblings. The bulk of the plot is made up of telling the story of Betty's life between the ages of 6/7 to 15, weaved together with tales of her siblings and their fates.

Betty by Tiffany McDaniel – Highly recommended

Eight novels in a year may sound like a lot, but McDaniel talks about writing like one taking urgent instructions. She is strict in her ways: she has no outlines or plans, writes strictly chronologically and only starts when she has the title and the first line. It takes her a month, on average, to write a book. “They need to get out,” she says. At the end of the book, I felt totally exhausted, but I’m so glad that I read this. What a wonderful, but difficult read! I have never read anything like it. Epic, lyrical . . . McDaniel’s sophomore work is a sweeping and heart-wrenching exploration of how we understand our parents’ lives and how our children will one day understand our own.”

Jamie Ford, New York Timesbestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweetand Love and Other Consolation PrizesBetty is a story based on the author’s mother’s life. It’s written in first person with Betty narrating. She shares the earliest history of both her parents, and then takes us through the family’s life as her siblings are born, before and after she is born, and up through the years as she comes-of-age. Landon was the type of father who would stand on his head, walk across the room like a spider or crab, and perch his long legs up on his elbows, making funny faces. He’d do anything to get a laugh from one of his children. As Mom says of him, “He was a lot of fun.”

The main theme of the strong sense of family bond and loyalty was captured so perfectly. I was teary eyed more than a few times while experiencing the love and comfort these siblings offered each other. i enjoyed The Summer that Melted Everything a bunch, but Betty; a standalone with spillover into TSTME, has so much more weight. i remember bits and pieces from The Summer that Melted Everything—i remember the language being striking, i remember the framework and a few details in particular, but this one is going to stay in my brain for a lot longer, and there are specific scenes i know are with me for life; not as fond memories of a book i enjoyed, but as straight-up reader scars. Stunning…It’s a striking portrayal of women fighting for their lives, and one readers won’t soon forget.”I remember the fierce love and devotion as much as I remember the violence." "our family tree grew with rotten, broken branches and fungus on the leaves." It’d be so much easier if the bad things in our lives were kept in our skin that we could shed off like a snake. Then we could leave all the dried horrid things on the ground and step forward, free from them.