Grim. If "Fay" is a car wreck, then this book is a slow death from cancer. You know it's going to end bad; there is no alternative. The ending is even worse than expected.
Allison's treatment of the setting, the characters, and the tone is perfect. My childhood came back to life, and I remembered cousins and aunts I had forgotten years ago. Thank God my family was not quite the "white trash" that hers seems to have been.
And the novel does seem autobiographical. Written in the first person, it reads like a memoir. A little search on the internet reveals that she actually lived the core of truth at the heart of this novel.
Definitely Southern Gothic, and Grit Lit. You don't finish this novel crying, you finish it wanting to shoot someone.
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