She Treads Softly: Sing Her Down

Friday, May 19, 2023

Sing Her Down

Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda
5/23/23; 288 pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda is a recommended gritty, violent, dark, feminist Western thriller.

Set during the pandemic, Florence "Florida" Baum and Diosmary "Dios" Sandoval are both inmates at Arizona women's prison. Dios thinks the two are bound by what they are capable of doing. Florida wants nothing to do with Dios. They both receive an early release. When the two go on the run from their two week quarantine, another murder occurs. LAPD officer Lobos is on their trail.

The narrative is divided into two parts and chapters alternate between the point-of-view of Dios, Florida, Kase, another prisoner, and Lobos. Dios is fixated on Florida and wants her to admit that darkness lives in women too. As the two are on the run, they make a plethora of bad choices.

There are sentences and observations included in Sing Her Down that make you want to yell, "Yes! That!" and then there are the over-the-top actions, reactions, violence, and swearing in the novel. I felt myself wildly swinging between loving the writing to cringing over excessive language and violence. These are interesting characters who always seem to be in dramatic situations and in conflict with each other. I appreciate the quality of the writing, but I'm not sure about the characters and the plot. This could be a novel I need to return to in the future.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.