In THE LESS DEAD (Mulholland, 341 pp., $28), these are drug addicts, prostitutes and other people who are barely missed and rarely mourned. When Margo speculates that youthful trauma and low self-esteem must have driven her mother to become a prostitute, her aunt hoots in derision. … It’s about money.”That no-nonsense voice, with its unsparing intelligence and utter lack of sentimentality, is what makes Mina such a good writer. “When we get killed they call us the ‘less dead,’” one of them tells her. Given the occupational hazards of California politics, Natalie Strait may have been kidnapped on partisan grounds.

Source: New York Times September 04, 2020 18:33 UTC